No better sound

A serious amount of giggling is going on around my kitchen table this Saturday night, but, for once, I'm only listening. Instead, my daughter and Best Friend are drinking an ill-advised amount of Pepsi as they try to determine how long they've known each other and what their first and best and most recent "misadventures" have been. Nothing like a nostalgic fourth grader.

Yes, I am eavesdropping a bit, but not to find out that they met when when one made blue Gatorade come out of the other's nose. Most of what they're saying is incomprehensibly silly, but I love to hear this particular friendship both take root and bloom. The vagaries of elementary school being what they are, who knows how long this duo lasts, but the odds seem good that they'll be together for me to remind them of this night long after they've forgotten the flood of cola that eventually coated the linoleum.

While they won't have Neopets or a menagerie of little plastic bobbleheaded animals in common for much longer, their shared sensibility and sense of humor could last, and will, if the number of spur-of-the-moment sleepovers I approve has anything to do with it. I can't choose my daughter's friends, but I can certainly play favorites, at least now, when they're young, and the mothering is easy.* Life is hard and kids are mean; doing my part to help my child have friends she can rely on seems the least I can do, even if it means an eternally sticky floor.


*relatively