It was an ugly exchange between me and the Salvation Army guy in the supermarket parking lot.

“Hey!” I barked at the man next to the red bucket as he sat in peaceful silence. “Aren’t you supposed to be ringing a bell? I’m entitled to a bell-ringing experience and you’re not providing it. I demand that you ring your bell at once!”

“Shut up,” said the seated man. “And make a donation already.”

A few heads turned as shoppers came and went, but the nasty dialogue was not as it appeared. The man guarding the red bucket is a friend from downtown and the sharp back-and-forth is typical of our greetings. The day he addresses me with a kind word, I’ll know something is horribly wrong.

My point is twofold, I suppose. I have great respect for the men and women who tend to the kettles each holiday season. It’s hard work and a noble commitment and immediate rewards are few.

And yet with all the respect I have for that man, I was still unable to approach him with even a modicum of grace.

The greatest friendships I’ve had in my life have almost always been marked by discourse laced with insult and vulgarity. I don’t know why that is, exactly. I suppose there are reasons rooted deep in the masculine psychology, a great profane strand connecting modern man with the brutish primates that came before.

Even the best of those great hunters likely greeted other members of the tribe with hearty whomps over the head. And they meant it with love. Those beatings meant: “I truly value your friendship and your skill for the hunt, Glog. But let’s not get all girlie about it, lest the women witness our affection and misinterpret it. Also, the saber-tooth has an appetite for the sensitive types.”

There are friends I have not seen in decades and I miss them a great deal. Yet, should we meet someday by circumstance, chances are good that crass compellations will replace anything resembling nostalgia and glee.

“Hey! How’ve you been (filthy nickname the long-lost friend earned in junior high school)? Still as ugly as a monkey, I see.”

“Good to see you, (vulgarity not heard since the ’80s)! And you haven’t changed a bit. Which is unfortunate, because you’ve always been a bit of a (swearword made up from two or three other swearwords.)”

These are the best friends I’ve ever had. And yet to utter a kind word of greeting would make me cringe and my buddy would have to slug me. It’s the kind of back-and-forth trash talk that replaces normal dialogue in friendships that have endured hardships and the spirit of competition.

I have such a relationship with a guy here at the paper. Every day when he walks into the newsroom, I call him a vile name and sometimes, if I’ve had enough coffee, I match it with an obscene salute. He fires off a salute of his own so that we’re like gunfighters dueling with sophomoric hand gestures rather than firearms.

And it’s all good. Because should he ever utter, with songbird brightness: “Hello, dear friend! How are you today? You’re looking very well indeed!” I would punch him in the stomach and then ask if he’s suffered a massive head wound lately.

And everywhere around the world, guys are treating their guy friends with similar abuse. They punch each other in the shoulders. They make raunchy comments about each other’s mothers or wives. They abuse each other verbally and physically until the ritual is over and normal conversation can begin.

But these are friends who would die for one another on the battlefield or on the street. These are people who would take a bullet for the buddy whom they just cut down with a particularly incisive insult. The viciousness of their communication does not diminish a sense of loyalty that transcends time, economic status and other earthly matters.

Cops greet each other with particular harshness. Mobsters do the same and so do the gangstas surviving on streets who are at least as dangerous as the prairies those primitive hunters roamed. The trash talk that resounds on a street basketball court is like poetry in its variety and composition, and yet most of those guys have each others’ backs completely when the game is done.

I understand that women have their own intricate language to the same end, but I’ve never understood it. They go about calling each other “girlfriend” and saying “Oh, no you didn’t!” and I just get more and more confused.

All that matters is that when I came out of the grocery store and was greeted with scathing words from the man with the collection kettle (he’d been thinking some up while I shopped. And who can blame him?) I knew that all was right. He continued to berate me as I walked back to my car and a few people turned to stare. Quite all right, indeed.

He meant it with love.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can shower him with creative compellations at [email protected].