August 9, 1997
Today is an old, old friend's birthday... (Happy Birthday, Lyn!) We met years ago when we had both just recently moved to the area and we got along right from the start. Children have that remarkable knack to get along; they seem to have their own language all of their own that surpasses the normal methods of friendship making.
When I was about ..four, perhaps 5 years old, I remember having a fantastic playmate. She would come whenever her parents had business with my father; and in turn, my mother would babysit. For hours, we'd play ... what, exactly, I've long forgotten. The strange thing, however, was that we spoke, verbally, different languages. We understood each other somehow.. Often, I wish I could remember the incident more clearly..
My parents used to tease me about the way I blindly "made friends". The process went something like this: first the "shy" stage, in which none of us would wander far from our mother's side; second, the "curiosity" stage, where we became restless and more curious about the other kid; third, "testing the grounds"-- we'd cautiously share an similar interest in a toy, just to "check out" the other kid; fourth, the "acceptance", in which the "other kid" became "one of the gang" -- never mind that "the gang" never existed the in first place. And then came the time where we would part ways, waving to each other like mad.
This is the time when the "interrogation" began. The parents would ask the child (me) whether she had fun or what did she do with the other kids... and then came the question, "What was his name?"
"I doanno."
It took me a few years to figure the "Hello, my name is.. What's yours?" stage into the equation. Meanwhile, my parents speculated on how we addressed each other without names: "Ey!" "Yo!" "Hey-you-in- the-purple-shorts!"
(shrugs) I don't know. :) All I know is that we had fun. And when you are a child, that's the important thing.
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