Friend

Last Thursday I visited a preschool class. I really love preschoolers and kindergartners. They're still so innocent and trusting, so willing to be friends with anyone, unmarred by rejection and distrust.

I sat down at a table with some kids linking chain links together, and they launched into conversation with me. They were building a "550 foot" chain, they said. (It was probably about 8 feet.) And one of the boy's boots were from Kohls. So were mine! He was excited about that connection. They introduced themselves to me by name, and I told them mine.

And throughout the next few hours, I made friends with almost every child in that class. Not because of my own efforts, but because they readily included me in their play and talked to me about favorite colors, their parents, their grandparents, the movies they'd watched recently (which, as it turns out, were some of the same ones I'd watched...I have a lot in common with preschoolers).They say social skills develop and progress as you get older, but I wonder if that's true. Because those preschoolers sure seemed to do a lot more socializing than most adults I know.

If it was that easy to make friends in the adult world, I'd have a lot more friends.