• He’s never going to actually “hang up” a telephone.
• Trip over a telephone chord from the wall
• Probably will never play a Super Nintendo
• Take a picture from a Polaroid camera
• See a Minnesota Sports team going to the “Ship” (har har har… not funny)
• Answer a phone without knowing who’s calling ahead of time
• Hang out at an arcade for the day
• Having to time your day out to catch a television show rather than on demand
• Knowing SPAM as something you eat, not annoying marketing fluff

Spam or Spam?

• Having a pen pal, or writing letters to friends.
• He’ll  never buy Hallmark cards to send rather than e-cards with dancing elf’s.
• Taping Shows on a VHS Player
• High Speed Dubbing - Remember mix tapes? ha ha!
• Developing film and physically shuffling through a stack – even sorting them into picture books.
• Watching MTV for the music not the smutt they show now… (how old do I sound now??)
• Going to the Library to check out a book, not just for the internet
• Manually spell checking a hand written paper
• or how about spelling class? Do they do that anymore?
• Having to choose smoking or no smoking at the restaurant
• Buying a soda for $.50
• Scrounging for a quarter for the pay phone to call home
• Ever knowing what a dial up tone sounds like…

Can you think of anymore?? I don’t consider myself old by any means but so much has passed between the two of us and our age.

Funny thing is when we hang out I do realize he’s still a preteen but it doesn’t seem to affect our communication much. I talk to him as if he were one of my peers… for the most part I guess.  It’s just very interesting that we come from such different places (age, home town, friends, experiences…) but even we can find things in common!!

Hopefully we can make it to the barn this weekend…

The other day ‘little’ and I had a man to man(boy) talk. He told me about his try at a relationship. Classic grade school stuff. ‘little’ has the hots for a girl in his class, and from time to time he’ll give me the scoop. Those conversations only come about if I really dig to hear about what he’s up to. This time he came at me with it straight! You won’t believe it… he wrote her a “You wanna be my girlfriend? Circle Yes or No” note, and has been contemplating it for sometime. This was definitely premeditated and thought out, unbeknownst to me. ha ha He was so serious about it too. I had to suppress a laugh when he initially told me but when I realized how serious he was and he was opening up, I quickly sobered my demeanor.

A little background: from what I’ve gathered, this gal in his class is new this year. She moved here from out of town. She’s smarter than he is (so says ‘little’), a bit taller, they ride the same bus, they shared candy on Valentines day, they haven’t said more than 10 sentences to each other (my favorite fact), and she is REALLY cute. That’s about all the info that I could glean over the past few months. Oh, they’re both in the 5th grade as well.

While we were recently hanging out he came out with it. He told me about THE NOTE (again, suppressed laughter). In all seriousness he told me that she wrote back on the reverse of his note, and said “NO, I don’t like you like that, but I think you’re really nice and I’d like to be friends.” He looked at me and said, “you know, I think I like that. I think this will be really good.”

I was so proud of him. He’s sort of a shy kid, around me anyhow, so when he told me that they were talking a lot more after his pitch. They’ve sort of broke down a wall by staking claim to their friendship and are enjoying each other a lot more. I told him I was really excited and impressed with how he dealt with the situation. I told him that I was happy with how respectful he was of her response and that it takes maturity to deal with it like he did.

It was very apparent that he was glad to talk about this with someone and get this off his chest.

He’s never opened up to me like this before. That conversation felt so ground breaking. He’s actually coming at me with his life. He’s not asking my advice but he’s willing to talk about these things. I’ve always wanted to have this relationship but after failed attempts to help him open up I chalked it up to his youth and figured I’d try again after more time spent together. I couldn’t be more excited that he’s willing to tell me these things on his own now.

This will be amazing. I have a lot of things I want to talk to him about, as our relationship progresses and this is a great stepping stone. What an amazing boy! I’ll keep you posted.