A Parallel Universe of Friends and Excitement

Ian attends preschool, and has a number of friends that he comes home talking about. Daniel does not attend preschool, so his social register is largely limited to those from church and his cousins... Or so it would seem. However, Daniel has many more stories about friends than Ian does, and, astonishingly, his friends, in these stories, have exactly the same names as Ian's friends from school.

So I'll be reading a story or telling an anecdote, and within a couple of minutes Daniel will be reporting a very, very similar story about something like that that had happened to him and *his* friends. For example, Ian has a friend from school named Phoebe, and Daniel will often tell very a propos stories about his own friend named Phoebe, but Daniel's Phoebe has many permutations of identity that Ian's probably doesn't. For example, unlike Ian's Phoebe, who is probably four or five, Daniel's Phoebe is sometimes five, sometimes three, and sometimes one. And best of all, sometimes she's a boy.

I went to school with a guy who had all kinds of colorful stories about his unlikely adventures in Japan and his friendships with the high and mighty - for example, a lunch he had had with Walter Mondale, leading up to the election of 1984, in which Mondale spent considerable effort trying to leverage their camaradie in order to pursuade this guy to vote for him over Reagan (to no avail, and much to the former Vice President's disappointment).

I had though that those wonderful stories were over, but I'm grateful that they're back, in a world where absolutely anything can happen.

(May, 2009)