Photo credit: blog.clarity.fm

In the post "One Cause of Amnesia,” I related a story about a friend of mine who owed money but forgot to settle his obligation, until I asked him to repay me due to a pressing need.

After I made that post, I remember another friend back in college in General Santos City. I saw her as a friendly, jolly, smart, witty and talented girl, and I thought she had a potential to become a leader in a student organization where both of us were members. We used to sing too because she has a fine voice, so our bonding led to a level of friendship.

However, one incident ended our friendship for good. That happened during her graduation. She said she lost the money given to her by her mother to pay for her graduation fee. So she asked me to lend her money because she was afraid to tell her mother, or else she would be angry at her.

Because I considered her a friend, I willingly lent the money she needed and that I worked so hard for. I earned that money from my work in CloudCrowd. After that, I had rarely seen her, so I wondered what went wrong.

Photo credit: blackcoffee.red

I learned later that she was able to march during her graduation day, and that looked good for me. However, she did not even text me about her debt. When I saw her somewhere, she was already avoiding me and I didn't like to approach her first either because I had hard feelings already.

Then I found out from a friend that she had bought a new cellphone. She totally forgot her indebtedness to me, that without the money I lent her, she would not have been able to march on her graduation day. All my good impression and respect for her have been gone already.

She is not a good friend after all. I even think she lied to me and to her mother. Maybe she used the money to buy a new cellphone. Who knows? That was possible. So if you want to lose a good friend forever, just try to borrow money and forget to pay your debt. That's the surest way!

One lesson I learned from this experience is that owing money is still a good thing as long as honesty and communication are maintained. Had my friend told me about her inability to pay due to a financial bind, if that was the case, I wouldn’t mind forgetting about the issue. We could have retained the friendship until now.

* Warning: This blog post is my original work. Please don't plagiarize.