Those Endearing Young Charms

While I was peddling my bicycle through the neighborhood, a young girl, probably 6 or 7 years old, waved at me and shouted out, “My birthday is in the summertime!”

What an interesting thing to say, I thought, at least as far as a six-year old is concerned. Children can get away with such oddities, and we write it off as just a kid being charming. At some point in our lives, the mysterious properties of youth sadly disappear into adulthood, and we are expected to act sensibly. If the roles were reversed, and I hollered some non sequitur to a kid, it might seem peculiar. (“I like apples!”)

Nevertheless, I waved back, the way we wave at people we don’t know, just to be polite. Even so, it did make me smile, and isn’t that one of the duties of a child? “Just doing my job, sir!”

With the advent of the Bluetooth headset, the public non sequitur is becoming commonplace, although it doesn’t sound quite as endearing coming from an adult, but more on the order of a mental patient wandering out in public. Occasionally, I’ll see someone in profile and they appear to be answering some Pentecostal voice in their head, but alas, they are merely talking on the phone. Are they receiving instructions from their God? No, just a grocery list.

Come to think of it, maybe what I heard on the street was not the exuberance of youth – merely another kid with a cell phone.