As long as ‘little’ and I have been together I liked to keep our get together’s somewhat private. Of course if we were doing something that needed to involved other people that was fine and from time to time that invovles bringing one of my friends in the mix but for the most part I like to keep our relationship pretty private. I guess it’s because I’m somewhat afraid of what effect someone else will have on him, or how he will do around other people. What if he acted up, or what if he didn’t like my friends, or maybe he would clam up and wouldn’t enjoy himself. Even though we’ve been together for a year plus to this point I still feel as though our relationship has a ways to go. I suppose all my relationships feel that way. I’m always growing with everyone I am with, be it old friends or fresh folks.
Tonight was a bit of a milestone in the department. I’ve always thought about surrounding ‘little’ with solid folks. I’d like to place influential people around and people of very good character (maybe to make up for the lack of my own…) so that he sees what awesome people are like that they live normal lives too. Not to say he doesn’t have awesome people in his life already because he certainly does but what’s a few more??
I know that he likes basketball so I brought him over to my good old highschool friends house to watch game 6 of the Celtics v. Lakers NBA game. What a disaster that was. There are three brothers that live in this house. One teaches english for a school in downtown Minneapolis (taught 3 years in Belize before that), another started his own clothing line and spent substantial time in South America in a business type role. The third worked with a tough crowd of kids on the south side of Chicago for a couple years before coming back here to get his masters in counseling. They are great guys and they are everything you would expect out of three brothers, who actually have an older one who lives in Wisconsin, and no sisters. They are tough, competitive, not giving of an inch if you didn’t earn it, but fun, loving, caring, and very sarcastic. Interesting combination of traits.
The funny thing about my perception of ‘little’ is that because I never had younger siblings mostly how I expect him to act is maybe how I would have acted in similar situations at that age. I was quiet, not to shy, but reserved and perceptive. Not ‘little’. Although sometimes around strangers he takes a while to warm up, this time he walked right in and was totaly in the mix of things. We were certainly going to a Boston supporting household and when I announced that there was a Lakers fan on the premises they gave the little all sorts of guff. He took like water off a ducks back… no problems. He even, to my suprise gave it back to them by rattling off Kobe Bryants latest stats, and breaking down the deficiencies of the Celtics. Now there were a few holes in his arguments but just the fact that an 11 year old had an argument to stand out blew my mind.
To be honest I really wasn’t as interested in watching the game, and i was intested, as I was with the outcome of this social experiment with ‘little’ being around my ‘grown up’ friends. There were a few times that I thought he was a little more forward than I he should have been, espeically being the newb in the group, and a few times he interrupted when he should have sat back and listened, but again that’s me putting my own self image, something he certainly is not, onto him and expecting him to act as such. All in all I was very happy with his candor and the reactions that he solicited from these fellas. He certainly was a boy amongst men but a boy he is for now.
As always, this kid as so much potential to be an amazing man.
-a very impressed ‘big’