Do You Want To Be My Friend?

You learn a lot from a kid who knows no boundaries.  Imposing on others is norm and opens up a world of opportunities that might not ever have surfaced.  We went camping this weekend to Ormiston Gorge in the Northern Territory of Australia.  With camping come close neighbors and with close neighbors come direct access to friends, at least in the eyes of a 7 year old.  It was a bit painful as parents as it might be construed as imposing.  I don't think people impose on others like they did in the past, which has built a world of segregated families. 

We did the customary greetings as camp site neighbors.  But for a kid it goes like this; "Do you want to be my friend?".  That's all that was needed for Timmy to gain entry into the campsite next to us.

Timmy was drawn like a magnet to their campsite.  He had a new found friend, Jordan.  I would hear him every once in a while say; "what was my friends name?" and then explain; "it take a couple of days for me to remember a friends name"

Not wanting him to be a nuisance we were constantly calling him back over to our site, which ended up a being a battle between Timmy and Craig, me and Craig.  Then we sent in Zach, his 11 year old brother, to make sure he wasn't being annoying.  Then they brought out the marshmallows and a gas burner and we lost both Timmy and Zach to the camp neighbors. We came prepared to make smores on a open fire but Ormiston did not allow wood fires.  After awhile I wandered over and started talking to Jordans parents, which eventually brought Craig over, not wanting to be camping by himself.  We found out a lot about our camp neighbors like; they live in Alice Springs, that there are hidden treasures all over the world and there were 30 treasures in Alice Springs and you can find these treasures via gps and geocaching http://www.geocaching.com/.  We had a good time talking and eating smores.

The rest of the weekend we spent hiking, rock hole swimming and camp clean up.

On the two hour ride home Timmy had his feet on the back of Craigs seat.  Craig said; 
Your feet stink"
Timmy replied; "Well.... you just have to get use to it."

That night while putting Timmy to bed I asked him what was the best thing of the weekend?
He replied; "My friend!"


Zach and Timmy at the waterhole