My 11-year-old son Sean has been following baseball closely since he was six years old. In fact, he's such a baseball geek, he has even been following my fantasy baseball league for the past three years.
Last year he begged to come along to our fantasy draft, but I chickened out at the last minute. I just didn't think he could sit through the six hours of baseball talk, and worried he might become a distraction to the other teams when he got restless. Sean was very disappointed when I told him he couldn't come. He lobbied nearly every day for the past year to claim a seat at this year's fantasy draft table.
He finally wore me down. I greenlighted his attendance.
The draft was yesterday, and Sean was there. So was a similarly-aged son of one of the other guys in the league. Both boys sounded like us as they discussed their favorite players, and joined in the debates about which players were destined for greatness, which ones were being drafted too soon or too late, or which ones shouldn't have been drafted at all. It was like having two more adults in the room...except these two just had higher voices.
The two boys also bonded immediately.
When I told my wife about it, I was marveling at the ease of their new friendship.
"Isn't it great to be eleven?" I said. "Can you imagine going to a party now and being told, 'Hey don't worry you'll have fun. There's another 46-year-old woman there. Instant friendship is guaranteed.'"
As the words were coming out of my mouth, it hit me. Sean and his friend hadn't just bonded with each other. They'd also bonded with everyone else.
And it's not because the boys were acting like adults. It's that the adults were acting like boys. When we talk about baseball, we all have that same youthful enthusiasm Sean has. We aren't there to talk about the reality of our lives (our mortgages, responsibilities, jobs, and retirement plans). We're there to talk about a boys game; a game that we've loved since we were Sean's age. And we can make instant friends when we talk about that too...anytime, anyplace, and with anyone.
It makes perfect sense that Sean fits right in with this aging band of eleven year olds.
He'll fit in for the rest of his life.
