As a child, I was often mortified by my father's friends who, like him, enjoyed embarassing their offspring. There were the off-color jokes I didn't understand, the garish clothes that never matched, the one-armed man who never wore his prosthesis at home. The list goes on.

My mother's friends played Scrabble, ate olives and talked about sex non-stop. Listening to their descriptions of their love lives made me want to never have one.

Then there were my sister's friends. Eight years older than me, my sister was an aspiring hippie in the early '70s. Synchronicity was never my family's strength.

Her friends wore beaded vests and skinny-dipped in our backyard pool. Their musical tastes ran toward Three Dog Night and Creedence Clearwater Revival, while my sister enjoyed bubble gum pop with me. Long after her friends went home, we'd listen to Bobbie Sherman and the Partridge Family. She gave me her record player when she got a stereo, though, and for that I will always love her.

When it came time to make my own friends, I struggled. We lived in one of those middle-class suburbs where everybody knew your name, whether you wanted them to or not. Which didn't mean they really knew you. I still live in that kind of community, and as often as I appreciate it, it also frustrates me.

I once went to three different coffee places just to find one where I could sit by myself and read a book without snubbing someone whose car I recognized in the parking lot.

I've always considered friends a necessary evil. If I want to spend time with them when it suits me, I have to spend time with them when it suits them, too. I'm a definite introvert who derives energy from inside, and I'm married to an extreme extrovert whose lifeblood is other people.

Our son is still trying to decide which to be, and it's his choices that are really creating a dilemma for us.

It isn't just that we want him to pick friends with interesting parents so that we won't mind spending Saturday night together at Chuck E. Cheese. It's that we want him to pick friends who actually treat him well, which is harder than it sounds for a child.

Come to think of it, it's not so easy for adults, either. Think of all the people in relationships where they're constantly criticized and judged, and they don't even realize it, no matter how many times it's pointed out.

Trying to teach our son about friendship has been quite an education.

What makes someone a good friend? My husband and I tell Colter that a good friend is one who helps you make good choices (very important for a kindergartner) and not someone who tells you to kiss a girl or pull your pants down.

It amazes me how early kids pick (and reject) friends. My son is a fanatic about who he sits next to at lunch, who he plays with during recess, who calls on him first during show-and-tell. In spite of what the Constitution tells us, we do not live in a democracy; we live in a monarchy, ruled by whoever our kids want as friends.

How do you explain to a 5-year-old that true friends accept each other as they are inside, not because of what they offer on the outside? Being fastest, strongest or able to spin the most on the swing without throwing up count in their social hierarchy.

Loyalty, responsibility and character have no meaning yet. And no matter how many of our friends' kids we introduce our son to, no matter how much time he spends playing with the kids we want him to adore, he stubbornly prefers the kids who live on the edge, like he does.

Like my parents before him, my son has managed to find friends who share his interests, inclinations and intensity, no matter my preferences.

Oh well. At least their knock-knock jokes are funny.

Julie Moos is a thirtysomething who lives with her husband and son. Her column appears every other Thursday.