Second Time Around

      I quickly discovered that children no longer go out to play alone, you have to sit out and watch them. They no longer go from house to house free style playing. You have to make play dates. The first week in the new school we learned that Wednesday is the popular play date day. Schools get out early on Wednesday. All the kids were going home with some one else. Gregory was excited because there was more time to play, however he had no one to play with everyone was already paired up for a play date.

      By the end of the month, we had met some of the moms. Someone asked” does Gregory  have a play date?”  No not today, I answered.” Not letting on that I was not sure about this play date concept. I can handle this. I told Gregory, you have to ask someone for a play date. “Get the phone number of a friend so that you can make a play date. On Tuesday night, I had Gregory phone Kelvyn R. to make a play date. From what I could decipher Kelvyn R. didn’t know what a play date was either. I took the phone and started to ask if Kelvyn could come home to play with Gregory after school the next day. However the person on the line, I realized could not speak English. Not thinking I started to speak louder as if that would help.   My husband who I had explained the whole play date concept, yelled down stairs, “Brenda, I don’t think that is how to make a play date’. “There must be more to it.” Still we had no play date.

      God throws out a life line when you are least looking for one in the form of Karen Hansen who became my new best friend. “Can Gregory go home with EJ next Wednesday?” Finally we had a play date. From that point on Karen tried to modernize me. She had grown up in Florida in Tampa, had also lived in Philly, and Atlanta. She was married to Eric and also had a beautiful little daughter named Emma. She asked me for my e-mail address and I told her that I didn’t have one. “You are going to miss out on a lot if you don’t have an e-mail address.” “Can’t they just call me on the phone?”