An introduction to Relationship Marketing, part 2 of 2

Love your friend as you love yourself

One of my favorite stories is about the lesson in the Bible to “Love your friend as you love yourself!”  

Notice, I did not say neighbor (no I don’t mean the joke about good fences making good neighbors), I also said friend. The rest of the sentence finishes with I am the Lord your G-d.   Why does the sentence finish that way?

100 friends and a body bag

Well, the story goes that once upon a time a son came home from school and said, “Dad I have 100 friends”.  

However, his father says, “That’s great”, but not so enthusiastically.  

The son asks his dad, “How many friends do you have?”

 To which his dad replies, “I have a half a friend”.  

The son is dismayed and asks, “Dad, you are the most popular person I know, how can you only have half a friend?”

 The father says, “Son, I want you to conduct an experiment. Take a bag and fill it with rocks.  For the next two weeks go to each of your friends and say that you were in a bar and got into a fight.  You defended yourself and killed the other person by accident.  The body is in this bag.  Will you help me bury the body?”

The son did so and went to each friend and told them the story of the bar fight and the body in the bag and asks for help to bury it.  After two weeks, the boy told his father that not even one of his 100 friends would help. 

He asked his dad, “What would your half a friend do?”  

His father said, “Why don’t you go and ask him?” 

 So he went to the half a friend and said bar, fight, body, bag will you help me bury?  The half a friend said yes, took him to the backyard, and helped him bury the bag.  Afterwards he told him to send regards to his dad but not to come back so as not to arouse anyone’s suspicions.

He ran back to his father full of excitement and told him that the half a friend helped!  

“But why do you call him a half a friend?”, he asked.  

“What did my half a friend say to you?”

“ Moreover, he did say not to come back again. But to call him a half a friend seems harsh as he is the only one that helped me. Dad, what do you call a whole friend?”