Chance Encounters

Wanna go for a bike ride? Can you play? Let’s go see what [enter kid’s name here] is doing. Oh yes, these are the sounds of impromptu play-dates. Depending on the day, the sounds of the doorbell ringing or strange small voices in my house either bring a sense of relief or slight irritation with them. I grew up on a farm, so play-dates were few and far between. I can only remember my parents hauling my bike into town once. And I think I was in junior high. We were raised to never invite ourselves over. Always knock. And leave a little early. After the first few times kids started randomly stopping over to play with mine, I brought the subject of kid-induced get-togethers up with a friend of mine. She’s a grandmother now but having grown up in Petersburg and raised four children here; I knew she was an expert on the subject. Her face lit up as she told me stories of her and her sister spending hours with other kids in town. The noon whistle telling them what time they needed to be home. They rode bikes, played games. Were scolded by other parents. Her stories sounded a lot like what my kids were experiencing this summer. Certain kids are even brave enough to walk in without knocking. The first time it happened, my husband and I were cleaning in the basement. We saw three small figures run by us (I have two children). Shortly after, the doorbell rang. It’s not uncommon to have a kid banging on our back door, or peeking through our front. There seem to be two homes in Petersburg that are truly kid magnets. One serves some older kids, and the other draws in a posse of seven and eight year old boys. I may be pretty slow catching onto some of my kids’ schemes, but it just took one night to learn a valuable lesson about my son and this house. Like a lot of people in town, we take a walk in the evenings after dinner. One night our kids rode their bikes ahead of us, and when we came within a block of this home, I heard my son yelling. He literally sat on his bike outside of their front door yelling this boys’ name. Humiliating, yes. Funny, yes. Soon the whole family stepped outside. The kids in their pajamas. I felt even worse. The boys immediately grabbed a ball and started playing. I began apologizing. They weren’t surprised. I guess I shouldn’t have been either. Since then, I’ve heard that those kids have conned their parents into walking over to our neck of the woods for a chance encounter of their own. It reminds me of those movies where kids meet on their bikes every day and raise a little cane before coming home for dinner. I’ll take those kinds of impromptu play-dates over video games any day.