Wise Men and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

law. Bud smiled and said, “He’s all right.”
    As I said, Bud forgets things sometimes. He has his good days and his bad days. But you can bet on one thing: whenever his sons - in - law drop by these days, Bud considers it a good day.

 
Kid Talk
     
    My wife needed some time to do some work one weekend, so I took my daughter to see a movie. On the way out of the theater, we ran into one of my daughter’s little friends from day care. Their conversation was one of the most charming things I have ever heard.
    My daughter: “Hi, Megan.”
    Megan: “Hi, Kathleen.”
    Kathleen: “I saw you watching the movie, Megan.”
    Megan: “I know.”
    They smiled at each other for a moment.
    “I would like a hug,” said Megan.
    “Okay,” said Kathleen.
    They hugged.
    “You’re my best friend, Megan,” said Kathleen.
    “You’re my best friend, too,” said Megan.
    After that, the two little friends parted ways, promising to see each other at day care the next day.
    As I said, it was a perfectly charming little exchange. Sure, my rendition of the encounter sounds like the script for an episode of the Smurfs or the Care Bears, but the thing that struck me about my daughter and her friend was their sincerity and lack of inhibition.
    Compare their encounter to the subplot that was being played out between Megan’s mother and me as we watched and waited for our daughters.
    While Kathleen and Megan greeted each other, I looked at Megan’s mother and smiled. She gave me a slight grimace of recognition (we had seen each other coming and going at the day care center), then she quickly turned her attention back to the girls.
    Kathleen and Megan talked about seeing each other in the movie theatre. I told Megan’s mother that I thought it was a good movie. She was cordial. “The kids seemed to like it,” she said.
    Kathleen and Megan told each other that they are best friends.
    “Isn’t that cute,” I said. Megan’s mother responded by asking where Kathleen’s mother was—in a tone that suggested I left my wife at home and brought my daughter to see “101 Dalmatians” as part of some sinister plot to seduce Mrs. Megan.
    Kathleen and Megan hugged. I watched them and got a warm feeling. I looked up at Megan’s mother. She had a look on her face that said, “Don’t even think about it, buster.” At the same time, she was fumbling around in her purse, presumably for her car keys, but it occurred to me that she may also have been going for the mace—just in case.
    Of course, Mrs. Megan need not have been concerned. As a fellow 20th Century adult, I was every bit as inhibited as she was.
    But our children have no problems socializing. My daughter not only tells Megan that they are best friends, she tells my wife and me that we are her best friends as well. It has not yet occurred to her that by definition, a person can have only one “best” friend. And who am I to straighten her out on the subject? In fact, listening to Kathleen and Megan has caused me to re - examine the logic behind having one “best” friend.
    Apparently, it’s a rather arbitrary thing governed by semantics and the limitations of our language. Theoretically, we can have any number of “good” friends, perhaps another select group who could be called our “better” friends, and ultimately, one person who is our “best” friend. And while the “good - better - best” method may have worked fine as a marketing tool for Sears & Roebuck, it definitely has its limitations when applied to friendship. As near as I can tell, there is nothing, bar proper grammar, to prevent a person from having more than one “best” friend, and I would submit that proper grammar is insufficient grounds for forcing my daughter to choose between Daddy, Mommy, or Megan as her “best” friend.
    I’m sure that Mrs. Megan and I and most other adults had more than one best friend at some point early in our lives. Somewhere along the way, our inhibitions took over, but