The Rabbit Catcher

The other night, as I washed dishes, I happened to glance out the kitchen window and saw a small boy in my neighbor's yard. Slung over his shoulder was what appeared to be a mallet with a blue foam head. The boy walked with a pace that was slow and deliberate. Occasionally he'd dart off with mallet waving in the air.

Suddenly, he disappeared from view. On a hunch, I decided to look out the window facing MY back yard...

And there he was – clearly on the trail of a rabbit!

I decided to have a chat with him and discovered he was new to the neighborhood and wanted the rabbit for a pet. After we chatted about the perils of wild critter catching (which included my securing his promise to leave the rabbits alone), he asked me how old I was.

So I answered, "Probably about a grandma's age. Do you know how old that is?" 

I should know better.

And how did he reply? "Well. Pretty old. Between 60 and 100." 

So I responded, "Yep. I'm pretty close to that." 

Then he said, "Can I ask you a question? You don't have to answer if you don't want to." 

I smiled and told him to "ask away!" 

He wanted to know if I played with video games when I was kid. 

This led to MANY other questions about what life was like (when I was a little girl) including whether or not PAPER and PENCILS even existed "back then". Then the boy began to ask all sorts of questions about his new school. This included whether or not he could wear the t-shirt he had on (i.e. one he had artfully decorated with a blue ballpoint pen).

We FINALLY reached the question he had been itching to ask all along:

"Will I be able to make some new friends? I had a lot of friends at my old school."

Hopefully I set his mind at ease with my description of the neighborhood (with playground nearby) and how some of the kids he'll meet will be going to his new school. Although I'm pretty confident his parents had a similar discussion with him, I suspect the little guy needed some extra reassuring from someone who had been living in the neighborhood "forever" (i.e. a number of years that equaled his time on this earth). I was glad to fit the bill.

There are days when I simply don't mind letting the dirty dishes sit.

Or being asked, "How old are you?"