Childhood Friends

Today was my son’s birthday.  He’s seven now and is numerically a year older than his sister, which makes him happy, although he wasn’t that upset about it really.   He likes his sister for the most part.   For dinner he wanted to go to Pei Wei.   We went there the other day and he wants to have Pei Wei for his birthday party meal as well, making Pei Wei a sort of a mini food obsession for him right now.

While we were at dinner he and my daughter were trying to monopolize their father’s personal space and time.   I was eating my meal, glad to have a break but I had to laugh when my husband said, “guys, don’t fight over me.”   I called  my son back to our side of the table and asked him about his day and the friends he was talking about from school.   He talked for a bit and then he asked me, “mom, did you have any friends when you grew up?”

I did have friends.   I had some great friends, I told him.   I told him about my best friend from my youngest memory, Jenny.   I said that Jenny had been across the street from the house Mimi and Gramps still live in in the winter months and that up the hill on the side of their house lived Veda, who was a close friend through high school.   On the other side were two boys, one older and one younger than me, named Jeff and Joey.   Which one was older, he asked.   I said it was Jeff.   He knew it was Jeff, he told me.

Then I told him about Rob, who moved in down the street and the first day we met I was on my Big Wheel and he’d come pedaling In on his Green Machine.   I had to explain what these two things were, saying they were three wheel tricycle like things only different.   It was about this time that my son had grown bored with my childhood reminiscing and moved on to my husband, and did he have any friends as a child.

It turns out we both had friends growing up.   The most surprising thing was when my husband said his best friend from childhood was Stephan, my daughter immediately said, “oh, I know him.”

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to get water from the ocean and make it into drinking water today and could he do that.   We explained that it was possible, but complicated and not cost-effective.   For him, the most challenging part would be that we’re not near the sea.   Yes, he said, but if he got a cup and a paper towel surely he could get the process started.    We tried to explain how taking the water out and leaving the salt wasn’t hard, but getting the salt out and leaving the water was the tricky part.   He learned the word desalination and has decided to think more on how he’s going to purify water for our family.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a friend at school named Madison.  She really likes Madison (we’ve only met her once).   She told me, “she’s the best friend I could hope for.”