Will you be my friend?

10 Shares

Friendship,” said Christopher Robin, “is a very comforting thing to have.”
― A.A. Milne

The girl is four years old. Her hair is curly and she has bangs. She held a pink Teddy Bear and sat on the floor with eight other children and listened to the teacher talk about dinosaurs.

She moved over and sat beside another girl who is four and has long brown hair tied back in two ponytails.

She said, ” Will you be my friend?”

“Sure.”

Then they sat together and listened to the teacher.

The woman is 54. Her hair is brown with gray at the temples and it’s pulled back in a long braid. In her hand is a cell phone . She wished she was holding a pink teddy bear. She wanted to ask another woman, “Will you be my friend?”

But she didn’t.

She said, “Is this seat taken?”

Then she sat down and checked the messages on her phone.

We hold our cell phones and purses instead of teddy bears. Sometimes we carry a book to read or an ipad with a dead battery. We protect ourselves because we don’ t want someone to say no.

We may sit down beside another woman and ask, “How are you?”

And they may answer, “Fine,” because they think we really don’t want to know that they are struggling with being a stay-at-home-mom, and they yelled at their kids because they didn’t want to be late, and the toilet bowl is stained from the hard water and the dog barfed on the carpet just as they were leaving.”

We really want to ask, “Will you be my friend?”

But we don’t ask, we talk about the weather and did you see the new iphone, and what do you think of Obamacare and where did you buy your shoes?

The woman who is 54 thought the girl who is 4 was very brave. The next time the woman goes out she will put down her phone and hold a pink teddy bear, and she will ask, “Will you be my friend?”

Maybe we should all carry teddy bears. Maybe the teddy bears will give us the confidence to find a friend. A friend that we can have forever. And if we don’t? We will still have our teddy bear to hold.