The Social Register

Ian is monitoring Daniel's social life very closely. Daniel announced today that there's only one girl that he misses - a girl who was in his preschool class, but isn't in his kindergarten class. Ian pounced - something like: "Daniel, you mean you only have one friend?" No, Daniel meant there's only one girl that he misses. And he really misses her. He hasn't seen her in a long time.

A couple of months ago, soon after Madeleine started kindergarten, Ian was concerned that she ostensibly wasn't making any friends. He asked her if she had friends; she reported that she did. He asked her their names; she explained that her friends don't have names. Then Ian shared his concern with me.

Ian, it turns out, is very confident about his own social life; he says he has "half of a hundred to a hundred friends," and that, in fact, he is friendly with everyone he sees, even if he doesn't know them.

Daniel estimated that he had ten friends, and then started to tally them, more or less as follows: "Shonner and Conn [a.k.a. Conner and Sean] make one, Adam and Meron make two..." Apparently "friend" is a family unit, rather than a category of atomic individuals.

(November 14, 2011)