'Friendly' conversation...

—     Hello, Mr. John. How are you today?

—     Less stupid than you, Mr. Smith; today and always.

—     Your disdain disturbs my peace, old friend.

—     But I’m not in disgrace. Besides, no woman ever ditched me and no dog was ever able to refute my reasoning in any intellectual discussion.

—     What’s eating you?

—     Maybe that dog. Anyway, I’m grateful to you not to have forgotten your personal and professional failures, especially because I can deduce from your reaction how much you still concentrate your mind on maintaining our wood-borer-smelling friendship, while having in your head other things to worry about.

—     ...Do your really know how wood-borer smells?

—     You may know that wood-borer isn’t what smells, but the wood that is consumed by it. Ironically, this is the same that has happened to our vitality.

—     Not ironically, but causally. Time eats away everything. Well, it undermines everything.

—     Using your questioning way, do you really think that our friendship has become this creature because of the decline of our vitality?

—     Don’t use me as a short-sighted intellectual toy.

—     No, I’m not doing that! I said that because, as I’ve observed, this is not what happens to other friends when they become old men.

—     I guess you have just heard that in films.

—     Maybe yes, maybe I’ve also watched it in a book.

—     (Laughing) Do you really usually read pictured books yet?

—     No, I don’t, idiot. I’m referring to a reader metaphor…

—     (Yet laughing) Oh Dear, I knew that…

(Both Mr. John and Mr. Smith stare at each other. Afterwards, both of them suddenly start to laugh.)