#58 Greetings Young and Old

When I was a child, I was a typical child. The salutation between my friends was most often a "hey" with a slight lift of the hand as if to prove neither were hiding a pointed stick or, conversely, keeping some delicious snack food to ourselves. If the situation demanded something fantastically formal, we would offer one another a "hi." I had a medium-sized group of male friends and one or two girl friends; who I swore were not my "girlfriends," but just friends who happened to be girls. At the age of eight, there were few terms of denunciation worse than those associated with you liking girls. Being considered a "ladies' man," in the topsy-turvy logic of preteen boys, was considered being a "girlie man." When my friends and I would boldly venture beyond our neighbourhood (our neighbourhood being confined to 50B Street, 51A Street and a small portion of 10th Avenue which connected 50B street to 51A) we though ourselves great adventurers in the tradition of Edmund Hillary, Robert Falcon Scott, or Indiana Jones. It was on one of these outer neighbourhood adventures when myself, Michael and Eddie traveled further from our homes than ever before. We made our way westward up to Bayview Drive.

So mesmerized were we by the heretofore unseen homes and yards of Bayview Drive, we didn't notice ourselves walking right into the domain of a vicious gang of eight year olds. There were three of them, numerically identical to us, but still, three is a large number when you're only eight years old. Our tribe met their tribe and did what kids do best: we stood staring at each other and did nothing. That was until the smallest of the native three broke the ice with a blissfully convivial "hey." By unspoken consent, Michael and I allowed Eddie to respond in kind: "hey," he said; and with that, the two tribal trios were now one great gang of six. Within weeks I was spending as much time with Sean, Jeremy and Kevin as I was with my older mates, Michael and Eddie. In time, distance had no consequence when it came to choosing friends. We all had bikes, and with young legs we could ride from anywhere to anywhere in a matter of seconds. Now that I'm older, making friends takes much more than a mere exchange of "heys." A handshake easily starts it off, but it seems so much more complicated than it was when I was eight years old. Asking a man I've just met to come over to my place to play video games sounds a bit too odd. I find myself pining for those simpler days when a lethargic salutation muttered under ones breath initiated a friendship that could last a lifetime.