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July 1st, 2009

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02:23 pm - Mental Whiplash
I pride myself on being one of those people who can have temporally-distant friends. Meaning: I tend to hang out with the sort of people whom I can go YEARS without seeing, and then the next time we're together, pick up right where we left off. Being as generally spastic as I am in the rest of my life, this skill is pretty much the one thing that ensures I have any kind of social life whatsoever.

But there are times when this phenomenon derails. Times when an external factor is introduced that short-circuits my ability to behave as though no time at all has passed.

Kids.

For you locals, it's no big deal. I see you and your kids often enough that my mental image updates pretty regularly. They do grow up fast, but it's easy to take, even in discrete little jumps.

I got an e-mail today from someone who moved out of Cleveland in 1999, and who I've seen in person maybe 3 times since, and only once with his family. When they left, his daughter was going on 3 years old, and he didn't even HAVE a son yet. Now she's going on 13 and he's ~8. The family pictures he sent are of him, his wife, some teenager who looks like his wife, and some grade school boy that looks like him.

I know who they are, but my brain is busily trying to convince me that they're some alien replicants deposited into his family within the last 6 months. Because surely the toddling little girl I remember, who gave her Elmo to me one night while I was visiting, is not 13 years old!!!

Mental whiplash is a weird thing.

I'm going to have to re-evaluate how I approach long-distance friendships with parents. Today, I think I've realized that the rules of this game are not quite what I thought they were.
Current Mood: [mood icon] shocked

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[User Picture]
From:[info]puckathon
Date:July 2nd, 2009 02:31 am (UTC)
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Next time you see them, though, just remember not to say to the teenage girl, "I remember you when you were thiiis big." That phrase is reserved for blue-haired great aunts and cue-ball bald great uncles who wear suspenders with their belts.

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