I went to the annual “get the parents together without the kids” pot luck for the third graders last night.
You stand around taking advantage of free babysitting (thanks PTO! and Grandma!) and adult conversation.
This year, it was literally a half a block from my house, which meant that I walked. I was a little worried about the walk home in the dark, but I figured I could just tag along with someone on the way home.
I was talking to Byron and Han (two people who also enjoy the outdoors – Han to the extreme) when the evening started to wind down. I mentioned to Jackie, who lives next door, that we should walk together. But she had to go pick up her kids.
It was then that the most amazing thing happened: Han offered to walk me home.
He didn’t so much offer, it was more like he told me that he would walk me home. It would be no problem. I had never met Han before (that I remembered), and it caught me so off guard that I couldn’t make sense of it for a minute.
It was a half a block of small talk, about him moving to the States from the Netherlands 20 years ago, and trying to figure out if our kids had actually ever been in the same class together at the school. It was lovely.
Maybe I just never walk anywhere anymore. Maybe no one else does either. But I cannot remember anyone since college offering to walk me anywhere.
It was charming.
It was old school.
It made my day.
The Blahg 