Bittersweet Friends

As an adult, it’s tough to make new friends. It’s not as though one can just sidle up to someone on the bus and ask what they’re doing. Or pull up next to someone and see if they want to go ride bikes together. Well, I suppose you COULD, but no one ever does that. Or rather, I never do that, as I’m afraid that people will back anxiously away like I have the swine flu. Or as if I licked the safety glass beside the bus bench.

Until last night. I was having a rather lonely Saturday evening, as plans had fallen through, and I decided that rather than hang out solo in my apartment I would head on down to Main Street and sit in the window at JJ Bean and people watch while writing in my journal. I love JJ Bean. While there is really no shortage of decent places to grab coffee in my neighborhood, JJ Bean on Main St. just has this vibrancy to it. There are always a ton of people wandering around, and the ordinary americano ends up being several hours of observing hipsters in their natural environment. The concentration of skinny jeans and 80’s resurgence off-the-shoulder dresses and ray ban sunglasses is unbelievable. Every other time I’ve gone there during the day or weekday evening it is PACKED. The night I was hoping it was packed it was relatively dead, unfortunately…

Except for this 6 year old kid that dragged a stool over to mine in the deserted windowfront.
“Hi” he said.
“Hi” I smiled.
“My name is Kyle”
“Hi Kyle, my name is Chrissy”.

This turned into the most epic, thrilling conversation I’ve had in ages. He was showing me his meteorite (read: rock) and his fossilized dinosaur tooth (read: rock) and then his pocketful of vampire bat jewels (read: plethora of rocks). He was telling me about this symbol that was burned into the skin of his upper arm that when the moon summoned him he would turn into a vicious dragon. Not a fire breathing dragon I found out through extensive questioning, but instead a dragon that shoots fire AND ice AND lava. Lava! Then he proceeded to pull up the sleeve on his shirt to show me his muscles and challenge me to an arm wrestling match. This entire time I wondered where his parents were? He had been sitting beside me for a good 20 minutes by this time.  He didn’t appear disheveled or unkept – just very articulate and imaginative.

Did his parents want their child arm wrestling with a strange woman in the front window of JJ Bean? I could see no one around, but reasoned there was no other time I really got the opportunity to arm wrestle a 6 year old kid. So we did. And being the chivalrous girl that I am, I let him win (read: barely) twice! Then he challenged me to a thumb wrestling match. AND I KICKED THAT KID’S ASS! You can’t let them build up too much false confidence, right? If you do they turn into cocky, self indulgent teenagers (read: as I have learned through my own personal experience, sob).

So yeah, my lonely night was made slightly less so by the company of a 6 year old. This was both really entertaining and absolutely depressing at the same time. I can just see it now on Monday morning:

“Hey, what did you do this weekend?”
“I  had a heated discussion with a 6 year old in a coffee shop about vampire bats being immune to dragon’s lava fire breath because they have hoards of secret buried jewels back at their caves… then I thumb wrestled him and TOTALLY WON – how about you?”
Blank stare.

He was a super great kid, and after my attempt at trying to keep the conversation quiet and politely answering his questions as not to encourage him (so sad that we feel strange talking to other people’s kids these days), but then after awhile I realized our conversation must have been echoing throughout the entire place. I was arguing with him full volume about werewolves, and bats, and jewel heists. I was arguing with this kid as though debating politics and religion and Tim Hortons coffee. And then he told me about all his girlfriends, and said that if I wanted to, I could be in his secret dragon club.

I think this means that I now have a 6 year old boyfriend.

Progress on the dating front? I haven’t lost my feminine charms yet, apparently.