I've had a lot of opportunity to think about the importance of friends in the last few months because I was dependent on them while recovering from an injury. While I am positive that my friends would never intimate or even think that I owed them for all they've done for me, I think I do. I've always believed that you need to work at friendships. It is important to both give and to be able to take in friendships. A colleague of mine equated this give-and-take to a bank account. She noted that when we give, we make a withdrawal from our bank account and put it into a friend's. When we take from a friend, we put a deposit back into our account. It is fairly obvious that if you keep either giving or taking in a one-sided relationship that the account is going to quickly get out of balance. That's why I think we really need to work at keeping those accounts in order. This does not mean that if I cook you a steak this week, you must cook me a steak next week, or if I drive this week, you drive next week. Friends may agree to those things, but it is not necessarily how we balance accounts. It just means that with each friend we have we learn to give and take in a balanced way. I am sure we have all been in situations in which it has been easy to give and give and then suddenly you realize that you haven't gotten anything in return. Instead of having a reciprocal relationship, you have in effect been taking care of somebody else. What is sometimes harder to realize is that for some of us, we don't take well and we do not allow friends to make deposits into our account. For those of us who find it is much easier to give than to take, the part we have to work at is accepting and saying thank you. No one can be all things to all people. Therefore, we hopefully pick and choose friends who meet different needs and to whom we can give different things. It is not something you always have to think about. I remember one time a friend and I who never remembered to keep track of expenses finally sat down and figured just how much we had spent on a social affair. Although we had not consciously done it, we were so accustomed to balancing one another that we came within 17 cents from an expense that cost us several hundred dollars. Accounts don't always have to be in balance all of the time. It is OK to give when a true friend is in need and it is OK to take when you are. But there are a few things to remember. First, be conscious of what you give and what you take in a friendship. Second, keep those accounts in balance. And, finally, overdrafts like in any other kind of banking should be a tempo- rary event. If you need to talk about this further please contact me at 752-2727 or by email. Sally Harvey's column runs three times a quarter in Dateline. She is the director of the UC Davis Academic and Staff Assistance Program.