Sozlet stories

And for this piece of lawyerly hairsplitting alone, Sozlet deserves to be an honorary grownup.

Me too! I think it's very sweet. And funny.

I think Zach is happy with how things turned out overall.

It's part of what I really love about this community, that the kids all know each other so well and they're rooting for each other (usually).

Yesterday at her softball game, one of her friends came up and asked me what I thought about the whole thing. I said I wasn't thrilled about how young they are, but I like Zach, so <shrug>. We chatted for a while. He wanted to know if Zach was at the game and seemed disappointed (in Zach) that he was not. Then he said, apropos of nothing in particular, "Sozlet is a really nice person." I awwed and thanked him for saying so, and said "I certainly think so but it's nice to know other people do too." He said, "I think Zach thinks so too."

And he's not the only one, all these kids want to come up to me and talk about it.

You're very right that she would've just asked out Zach if she felt the need to. (Yesterday she was texting with another male friend who is a friend of Zach's, and after a while the friend said "I don't think we should text anymore." She asked why, and he said he didn't want to get in a fight with his friend. She said she was sure Zach wouldn't mind, the friend still wasn't sure, so she then texted Zach to ask. He said "of course I don't care" before moving on to other things.) (I don't know why that parenthetical leads from the first sentence, something about them not being all gender role-y about this. They've gone dutch on all dates so far, etc.)

The way she's explained her feelings towards Zach to me is that they've been close friends and she definitely liked him, in a wants-to-spend-time-with him way, but just wasn't sure about the crush part of it and thought most of the people in her grade who were dating were pretty silly. When she realized recently that she did in fact like him as more than a friend, she just banished the thought because she didn't want to deal with it, and admitting it meant it getting out (since she has about five friends from whom she cannot hide anything, even if it's unspoken).

Edit: I have to add what she told me about when she realized. He's always coming up with harebrained schemes -- they should start a band, they should design a videogame, etc. A couple of weeks ago he came running up to her and said "we should start a food blog!" For some reason that was the moment. It's very him.

So overall it worked out pretty well I think. Thus far. Fingers crossed.

IKR!

When my oldest was in 8th grade all the kids were preparing for the 8th grade dance, the big concluding event of middle school. Almost all of the kids were either group dating or asking someone out "as a friend" but my son asked a girl he liked. Like you said, everyone was completely invested in a potential budding romance. At that age, everyone is just play acting at being adults. Awfully cute stuff.

soz, OMG, I'm remembering when you were pregnant with this kid.

What's IKR?

I know!

IKR = I know, right?

But also, I remember when I was pregnant with this kid. And it seems way too recently for all of this romantical stuff to be going on.

Not to mention that she's just about to exceed me in height.

At least, when Zach is thirty years old, he isn't going to ask himself "What if?".

Without making this a relationships-and-marriage thread, I do want to record that I found this part of your post heartening. I miss the casual male-female friendships that I used to have in Germany as a matter of course, and that Americans of my generation almost always seem to act awkward about. From my foreign perspective, it seems bad enough with just random acquaintances. But it gets really bad when the participants used to be more than friends, or suspect each other of wanting to be more than friends in the future, or are friends with an former or potential more-than-friend, and so on recursively throughout the social network. It's such a tar-pit of pointless awkwardness; seeing the young generation of Americans relax about it makes me happy and optimistic.

Remembering when I managed to grow taller than both my parents. I loved that.

Thomas, I'm not of your generation, but aren't we casual friends?

We are. Fair enough, so there are exceptions to the rule.

That said, I'll conclude my tangent by saying that the rule I have in mind is pretty much about same-generation people. While that rule does have its exceptions in America, too, my female American friends have a strong statistical tendency to be well above or well below my age; I strongly suspect the perceived more-than-friends elephant in the room as the culprit with same-age American women. (There is no statistical doughnut hole with same-age German females.)

But enough about me. Let's hear more about Sozlet!

Wait - Sozlet is *dating*? The Sozlet? The one who was just yesterday, sort of, daydreaming about nice, buffalo poop-scooping, talking dinosaurs?

She is still going to be a fashion designer when she grows up, right?

I don't know you, nimh, but I've certainly heard the best about you...

Have you and sozobe lost touch?

There's a bunch of the old crowd that are friends on Facebook. I seem to recall ehBeth knowing all about that...

Sozobe doesn't post here that often. PMs are working at present, and she may get an email alert if you send her a PM.

Well lawzee! Gonna update us, nimh? Still leading demonstrations in Hungary, or did that wear kind of thin after a while?

nimh! Hello there!

Yep, she is. Still is in fact. They are stupendously, cavity-inducingly cute. Hey pm me a current email address (I'll send something to an old one and see if it's operational) and I'll send a couple of pics.

She's definitely mature -- this dating thing, plus just how she looks/ acts. She helped out E.G. at a local science career day thing and everyone assumed she was his graduate student. ("So what is your field? Dark energy, or…?"/ "I'm in 7th grade."/ "Haha."/ [Wednesday Addams deadly serious face.])

BUT she's still a goof. She's parlaying the goofiness into creative writing more, to nobody's surprise she's good at it. But she also just stumbles around dramatically to indicate the fact that she's dying of hunger when I'm taking too long to make dinner, etc.

Well that and astrophysicist and 2nd-grade teacher and marine biologist and mom.

Soz and Nimh! That's like seeing Jackie Kennedy and Elvis in the bush!

Hey, that sounds like a pretty good combination. :-)

Yay, Soz and nimh! Oh, and sozlet!