Not Like the Ones in Raiders

Last night my friend, Julie, posted a few pictures of her son, Julian. One of them was from a site (or is it a movement? a project?) called Humans of New York. It includes a quote that basically proves that Julian is, unsurprisingly, one of the world's best inhabitants. Go on, click the link, I'll wait. Totally worth it.

I shared the link and a lot of people commented on the fact that Julian is so bright he makes you go blind, but in a good way. As the conversation evolved I said, "Remind me to tell you my Julian story." I think I've told this here before but it's good enough that I'm fine with telling it again.

You see, Julian and I went on one of the best dates I think I've ever been on. (Before you call Child Protective Services please just read the rest of the story and cool your dialing finger.) This was about 7, or maybe 8, years ago so he'd have been around 10. His mom and dad were performing. Both he and I were going to see the show but there was a long stretch of time between when they needed to arrive and the start of the show so Julian and I agreed to hang out together to pass that time.

First we left the venue which was chilly and a little weird with all the nervous performers. Thankfully it warmed up in both ways by the time we got back. We talked about Sim City (he was an expert, I was not, I learned much) as we walked to a pizza parlor. We were both a little keyed up. We didn't know each other well and had no way of guessing how the night would turn out. We bonded a bit over one of our favorite foods and then decided to go to a nearby bookstore's cafe for some homework as mandated by the parental units. We got hot chocolate, found a place to sit across from each other, and dug in to the homework. He was infinitely tolerant about laying out for me what needed to be done and getting right to it. I don't know if I was visibly nervous but I worried that we wouldn't get all the homework done and his parents would be mad and the sky would fall and...well, a lot of other long range unimportant things. About halfway through the homework he did it.

He said, quietly but decisively, "I think we should take a break and read our books for about 10 minutes before we finish this."

Floored.

Fucking floored.

Also, fortunately, smart enough not to deter any child from reading. So, that's what we did. We got out our books (at least one of us was reading Harry Potter, maybe both) and we read companionably across the table from each other. Then we finished up the homework loose ends and continued to talk as we wound our way back to the music venue where we ate some more stuff and watched a great show.

At some point I remember thinking, "Damn, if this were what happened in a real date I would go on more of them. I mean, how fucking genius to just take a little breather from the hard work of hanging out with someone new? How did he think of that? How can I get adults to be OK with that? We need to start a movement!"

I haven't started a movement yet but I continue to be grateful to Julian for showing me how it's done.

*The above photos are not Julian. I don't have any pics of him for my own use. They are other stellar humans so I felt they were appropriate.