Watch My Six

"You got my back?"

"Hell yeah."

Back in the day, this is all that mattered when determining your truest friends.

It's how you measured them.

That when it went down, and it always eventually would, some people would stay and others would run.

And it wasn't always who you thought it would be.

Both ways.

I've had friends run the second (before) it got hot.

And I've had bare acquaintances defend my honor without a second thought.

It's just who they were.

There till the end.

These people quickly switched places.

If only in my heart.

I used to work at a place where they would repeat certain phrases. Mantras. Things they thought wise. Witty.

One of them was, "If someone tells you who they are, believe them."

Which I always thought was the dumbest thing I had ever heard in my life.

People lie all the time.

Tell you how great they are and all that feces.

But you see, I was wrong.

For the saying is based on people telling you who they are through their actions, not their words.

You hope that actions and words mean the same thing, and ideally they do, but your experience should show you how this just isn't so.

Look around you.

Who's the nice person pretending to be a jerk?

And who's the jerk pretending to be a nice person?

Now, I'll be the first one to tell you that if you watch your back too much, you'll take an uppercut to the jaw when you turn around.

Keep your head on a swivel. 

This is why it's important to have people around you that you can absolutely trust.

Such a list is a short one, though.

Always has been.

Always will be.

Trust is earned over time, lost in a second.

But a shortcut to gaining a person's trust is to have their back.

Use this information for pure purposes only.

Good looking out.