An act of friendship visited itself upon me recently. It was at the pointy end of a .44 Magnum revolver.

Now, to the keen observer it will be immediately apparent that I am not a gun owner, nor have I ever enjoyed shooting them. No self respecting gun owner would ever refer to the ‘pointy end’ of anything.

That said, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and it came out of nowhere. My wife Mac and I were driving en route to Keremeos British Columbia, a small town in the Similkameen Valley known for high wind, blistering summer heat and remarkable red wines, to visit our friends Darlene and Paul. Mac and Darlene first met when they were five and their men have been folded into their friendship.

My phone prompted me that I had a text message.

“Yo, wanna go shootin’”

It was Paul.

“Hey Mac” I said, “I’m goin’ shootin’.”

I have no idea why I was all of a sudden dropping the ‘g’ off words. Mac could see I was excited though. It was my birthday and I think Paul thought it might be fun to shoot some bullets at something or other, you know the way Gun People do. For me though it was more than that, it was an act of friendship.

Now many of you who follow my blogs might well assume that I have loads of friends. I am easy company, quick with a laugh and always interested to find out stuff about other people. But you would be wrong. I can count the number of friends I have on two hands. That may seem an abundance of friends but I’m 76 and it is a measure, a metric that does not speak well of me.

Of those ten friends, the most obvious would be my wife Mac, an astonishingly important friend as it turns out. Then my four adult children, with whom I have shared much, and proudly count as my friends. After that it is slim pickings. I won’t name them for fear among other things of leaving the unnamed unhappy, but I dare say they know who they are. I am also struck by how few of my friends are male. Throughout my life I have been drawn to women over men. I have found women to be more profound in thought, more engaged in friendship and more comfortable with the intimacies that come with friendship, the shared thoughts and so on. After sports and women, men mostly run out of things to talk about.

Which is what makes Paul stand out so much. Now Paul is what the movie star Liam Neeson is; even at 70 he is tall and muscular and physically imposing. He must have been formidable in his youth. He is blunt in conversation, compassionate, loving, unafraid and uncompromising when it comes to his core values, something his wife and children love about him. Through it all though, he is all man.

As my father the soldier would have said, “When war breaks out. I pick Paul.”

Fact is, he’s made of good stuff.

The next day, off we went to the Keremeos Rod & Gun Club. Paul dropped me into the world of Gun People, teaching me protocols and rules and insisting on my adherence to them all. I was predictably sceptical but here’s the thing; it was so much fun. I channelled Liam in his movie ‘Taken’, and then again in ‘Taken 2’ and once more in ‘Taken 3’ (just as an aside, has there ever been a more obvious example of how little effort is put into naming movies these days. Whatever happened to Die Hard or Dirty Harry or A Fistful of Dollars or Driving Miss Daisy?! Good Lord, I miss those days).

But I digress. Where was I? Ah yes, I had assumed the position at the Keremeos Rod & Gun Club. Round after round I shot, drawn into the primal, feral world of shootin’ things.

“Centre mass, Tony. Nicely done.”

Not that centre mass meant anything to me nor mattered much on a paper target, twenty-five yards away, but Paul’s approval meant something to me, so centre mass it was going to be. I conjured up the Greatest Manly Man of All Time and went full Clint Eastwood on that target.

“Do you wanna punk? Do you really want to” and then with the target steadfastly mute, non responsive, I went full Defcon 1 on it’s sorry ass.

“Go ahead, make my day!”

And I filled it with burning lead.

“Perhaps we should call it a day.”

It was my friend Paul, apparently realizing I was spiralling. I snapped out of my fantasy, turned to Paul and said, ‘THAT WAS SO MUCH FUN!”

Well, I didn’t quite say it, I may have been shouting by then, a combination of being all fired up and noise cancelling ear phones. I couldn’t hear a thing.

I’ve reflected on that gun totin’ (you see I still haven’t found that ‘g’ I dropped sometime ago) … I’ve reflected on that gun totin’ adventure since. The shootin’ was fun, more than I had expected but it was more than that – it was the act of friendship that really got my attention.

Turns out “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

Hmmm, – wish I said that, but I didn’t. The American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson did. Turns out he’s right.

Best part? Now Paul and I can talk about sports, women and shootin’.

Paul’s definitely on my friend list.