Hobson's Choice
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Good old boys
I just noticed this about children: they are kind of like good old boys in a small town, in that they feel required to greet every other child they see and engage in a little small talk. Or maybe they don't feel "required;" they just seem to naturally do it. "Oh, there's another kid. I want to talk to them."
Are they a subculture allied against their adult overlords? The downtrodden always recognize in one another an ally?
Or is there something that we learn as we grow so that we don't automatically want to talk to every person we see? It would be rude, even, if I just started talking to every person I saw, especially so if were to use the child's opening gambit of "What are you doing?" Somewhere on the playground, we learn perhaps that not everyone plays nice. We learn necessary caution. Sometimes, in moments of loneliness, it would be nice to return to childhood's easy and imperative conversations with perfect strangers and then to start running and playing with them on the swingset.
8:31 a.m. - 2006-03-05
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