Thanks For Being Nice To Me

[poliphilo]

I was out cutting the hedge yesterday afternoon and a child from down the street- a lonely 12 year old who gets lost in the crowd of her siblings- stopped by for a chat.  After a while I asked Ailz (sotto voce) to come and chaperone me because- well- a middle-aged man has to be careful around kids these days. I hate it, but there you are.  Ailz was showing her our collection of soft toys (we've got hundreds of them) and wound up giving her a couple. Later she returned with gifts of her own- a miniature scent bottle and a doll's hand mirror- plus a thankyou note. 

thank's for the tedy what you give me and thank's for being nice to me and you are a good frend to now.

I've fixed it to the fridge with a magnet. 

I don't know how people who are around kids all the time can stand it- all those vulnerable young lives- and knowing all the horrors that surround and await them- and being so powerless to do anything about it- like watching a fleet of paper boats going off down a fast-flowing river. 

Comments

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Yes - things that used to be confined to a certain newspaper (now, I think, gone) are now all over the radio and TV.
I wasn't thinking so much of "loners" (which I take to mean complete solitaries) but simply people who need to spend some time alone, or children who prefer adult company.
Even witches (in persecution times) weren't solitaries. It's a long time since I knew an anthropologist who wrote a thick tome on this in the 1960s, but the impression I got from him was that it was their sought-after-ness that often sparked off witch-hunts, rather than their solitariness.