Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Cutest line...ever...

And so it begins. DD#3 aka B is 11. She rides with a 4H club and can’t wait to start sorting cows with the riding club we belong to. She plays Call of Duty 2 with her buddies at the Youth Centre, her nickname is Sgt Slaughter. Most of her buds in that game are boys. She got the nickname for picking them all off one by one before they asked her to join their clan. She is quite adept at Age of Mythology, and is teaching me some cool tricks. She reads more than I do these days (I think maybe even more than I did as a kid) and has a vocabulary that blows many adults out of the water.

She attends the Catholic school in the town we used to live in. She and her little sister commute with me, getting off at the bus stop 3 mornings out of five. It’s a good time for catching up, talking about our day on the way home and what’s going on, on the way in.

She complains about how all the boys want to talk about is hockey at school and hangs with the girls, only to complain about how boring the girls are and how she wishes hockey season was over already and what was wrong with boys anyway, mom?

My friend has two boys who live in another province; they join her for the summer holidays and Christmas. Her oldest, R is a great kid, not that O isn’t but R and I became fast friends when he found out that D & I had worked on a Japanese war film and been dressed as samurai. I have great drawings he did for me on my fridge and he drives his mom crazy asking when we’ll get together when he comes out to visit. It’s awfully cool to have that sort of connection with him and I hope it continues into his teen years.

He’s 12 and she’s 11. She’s a tomboy who cries while reading Chicken Soup for the Soul stories and he’s a sensitive soul who emulates samurai warriors and plays electric guitar. An articulate young man, one that were they 17 and 16 I’d have no problem trusting my daughter with. He’s a dreamer, full of the sense of ‘moments in time’. His brother is the flashy sort, the cute kid, with a touch of the devil in his eyes. I’ve told their mom that R will be the one with the girl friends, reading them poetry, taking them on picnics and O will roar up on his flashy bike and steal them away on his brother. 

R took quite a shine to B and very much wanted to ‘make an arrangement’ as it were. She came to me and told me that he wanted her to say she was his girlfriend, even though he was leaving for home and they wouldn’t see each other till next summer at the earliest. They were expecting to maintain contact through emails and letters and instant messaging online.

No. Sorry, but no one on one boyfriend/girlfriend dating till you’re 16. This was echoed somewhat vehemently by her eldest sister and brother. Dad just gave her ‘the look’, ‘nuff said there. She wasn’t really too bothered, maybe even a little relieved. You can be friends, I told her, there’s nothing wrong with that. But no way on the boy/girl friend thing, what was the point anyway? Keep in touch, a pen-pal friend is always great and since they are both fairly academic in nature, I thought maybe there’d even be a bit of cultural exchange as it were.

He said he understood but he kept trying, sending her emails about how much he liked her and how long they’d have to wait. A whole 5 years… oh my… 

He had read in a book or magazine (I’m not sure which) about how the world would be ending 2012. Coincidentally this is the same year B will turn 16, in July. The world, according to his reading, will be ending in Dec of that year. He told her that if they couldn’t date till she was 16, then they’d only have 5 months together as boyfriend/girlfriend.

Is that the cutest line ever, or what?

(thanks kiddo, for giving me permission to embarrass you this way.)