Do you want to play with me?
That’s all it takes in the world of children to make a friend. I was thinking about it after our second night at the hotel last week when both girls were bugging me to go out to the pool. They wanted to meet friends from the night before.
All they knew about each other was their names and ages, which have already been forgotten since, but having played with them for just a short time they were considered to be a friend. Certainly these are not lasting friendships only as long as we happen to be in the same hotel or sometimes even simply the short time spent playing together just that once.
Watching one of these instant friendships blossom reminds me of just how much our perceptions change as we age. The innocence of childhood which allows for such friendships seems to get lost over the years. The ability to play with a stranger in the same way you would play with a long time friend disappears.
I certainly wouldn’t grasp the hand of someone I met 5 minutes ago and jump into a pool together or suggest we play a game. Perhaps it is this, our inability to play in quite the same way that prevents these instant friendships from happening. Our idea of what makes a friend also changes, someone we will meet only a few times is not considered a friend, still a stranger or at the very most an acquaintance.
My oldest in fact wasn’t calling her playmate a friend simply “the girl I was playing with”; her idea of friendship has already begun changing just shy of her 12th birthday. She recognizes that someone she plays a game with isn’t the same as the kids she has known and played with for years.
For me and I’m sure for most adults those moments in which we share a few words with a stranger while waiting in a long line or commenting on something of mutual interest is perhaps all that is left of these instant friendships. I think that these friendly moments which give us a short connection to another person are the remnants of these unique instant friendships of childhood.
