Tonight, on the way home from Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, K got a text. “H’s mom just sent me a text,” she said to the backseat. “H is coming to your birthday party and is very excited about it.” An affirming thought: someone other than family likes our kid. Yes, it’s sort of an obvious assumption in a sense: by age nine, most every kid has learned how to make friends with someone.
And yet, there’s the girl that sits in our lunchroom at school every single day alone. One of the sweetest young ladies I’ve ever had the privilege to teach, and yet without a single friend some days. “I just like being alone,” she said once when I plopped down across from her during lunch with my salad and began chatting. And I believed her: I was a bit of a loner myself, and I sometimes thought being alone was just easier than dealing with the uncertainties of other people. So here’s this thirteen-year-old who can’t or doesn’t want to make many friends, and I realize that it’s entirely possible that L might have made it to nine without making any real friends.
What is friendship at that age, though? Just a few weeks ago she was complaining about how some of the very people she’s invited to her birthday party were being none-too-friendly toward her — the usual petty playground stuff. Can she tell when people are really her friends and when they’re just using her, I’ve wondered. How accurate is the perception of a young girl?