Last month, “Saturday Night Live” great Amy Poehler won the first ever Golden Globe Award in the podcasting category. On her show, “Good Hang,” she chats it up with her Hollywood friends. The June 2025 episode with Poehler’s former SNL co-worker Seth Meyers really stuck with me for one specific reason: friendship.
In it, Poehler says, “You’re very, very good at friendship,” and Meyers replies, “It might be the thing I’m best at.”
I’ve never heard anyone say, “You’re good at friendship.” I’ve heard, “You’re a good friend.” But to say you’re good at friendship, what does that mean? When someone asks what you are good at, you usually say things like math or baking.
It makes perfect sense. We can all name people who are very good at friendship. Nancy, my best friend of 50 years, tops my list.
Once upon a time, she watched me drink beer out of a flowerpot. Now, she gives me Crock-Pot recipes. I remember when she couldn’t read because she couldn’t read, and now she can’t read because she can’t see and needs to wear readers. We used to get rides from each other’s parents. Now, we offer rides to each other’s colonoscopy appointments.
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Nancy and I passed so many notes in high school that we bought a spiral notebook just for our correspondence. I would write stuff during class and pass it to her when I saw her in the hallway. Then she would write in it and pass the notebook to me in the hallway. It was the primitive form of texting.
Once, when Nancy was grounded, she wasn’t allowed to talk on the phone or watch TV or do anything. She found a piece of poster board and a box of markers and wrote me a note about nothing and everything. Each line was a different color. The entire poster board was covered. All of this is completely true except that Nancy wasn’t grounded — it was me. She made the board to entertain me during lockup at Fenster County Jail. That’s a good friend.
In the late ’80s, Nancy’s parents were out of town and we had some guys over to her house. I was making out with some guy in her sister’s bedroom, and I looked up and Shaun Cassidy was looking back at me. Her sister had a Shaun Cassidy poster on the wall, and Shaun was mocking me while I was kissing some dude, possibly also named Shaun (but spelled Sean). (If Nancy’s parents are reading this, I’m totally making this up and none of it is true, except for the Shaun Cassidy poster, of course.)
During a huge snowstorm in 1979, school was cancelled. We wanted to hang out but our parents weren’t about to drive. So we each packed an overnight bag and walked to meet each other. We lived exactly one mile apart. We each trudged through the insane snow, met up, had a nine second conversation about whose house to go to, and trudged back. And because of the snow we stayed at the other person’s house for like three days. We did that every snowstorm after for years. Even now, when there is big snow in the forecast, one of us calls the other and says, “Want to walk over?”
I bet you have a treasured, loyal, loving person in your life who is very good at friendship. I also bet you, yourself, are very good at friendship. It’s a strength, just like being good at fixing cars or painting.
Seth Meyers says he puts a lot of work into cultivating quality friendships.
“I feel like I get so much more out of them than I put into it,” he says. “I like who I am through the eyes of my friends.”
That’s such a nice way to look at things.
When it comes to Nancy, I have one more perspective.
Her friendship is like an underwire bra … providing support and stability, even when we are separated.
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