Tricked Into Looking Into a 37-Year-Old Mirror

So after school on Friday, to celebrate Laura's return to the fold (thus healing our "broken-down family"), we headed over to Maple Park, where it has become a small tradition for other Baker students to gather and get their Friday ya-yas out, and for their parents to mill about and catch up on all the news/gossip from the Baker scene.

Among the gathered were one of Piper's best friends and her mother, and the mom shared with us a conversation she had had recently with her daughter regarding a new social aspect to the second-grade girls' lives.

"And she said, 'Mom, all the other girls have boyfriends now!'" The girl was noting a difference between the other girls and herself—she seems to be more of the "tomboy:" she is friends with these male classmates but more "another one of the boys" rather than a "girlfriend."

"Oh God," I said, rolling my eyes. "This was inevitable, but I didn't expect it so soon...."

"Wait, let me tell you what she said," continued the mother. "I asked her to tell me who had boyfriends. 'Well, there's Piper," she said. "She has three boyfriends! There's Karl, and there's Jordan, and then there's Eric.'

"And I said to her: 'Wow. And who else has other boyfriends in the class?'

"And she thought about it for a moment and finally said: 'Actually, Piper's the only one.'"

Oh. My. God.

The anecdote conjured a clear memory of my second-grade year, Mrs. Judson's class, Idyllwild Elementary School, and I realized more clearly than ever before that this kid is just a female version of me.