I wanna sit by you
A group of kids came to the homeless shelter today. They came by bus as a volunteer group. As they scrambled to find seats in the dining room to listen to their leader give instructions, I heard one of the best compliments I can ever remember hearing from my childhood. One kid hurried over to another kid and said, with a sense of urgency, "I wanna sit by you!" With a relieved look on her face, she found a seat next to her friend, and they chattered away excitedly.

What a flashback to my days in school! When is the last time someone told you they want to sit next to you? Or better yet, when is the last time you said that to anybody? Do you ever meet a group for dinner, making a point to say to a friend, "I want to sit by you!" I doubt it. Sometimes we 'save a seat', but that's not quite the same as letting someone know you want to sit beside them.

It's something left behind in childhood, the pressing need to make sure we are blocked in by those we know as our friends. We didn't want to feel lost. We wanted to make sure we were surrounded by our favorites. We wanted a prime location to connect with our best friends. We wanted everyone else to see that we had a place beside someone that matters. We didn't want to be left out, or stuck sitting next to someone we didn't know, or worse, by someone dorky. If you think about it, telling someone you want to sit by them is really one of the simplest, yet most flattering compliments you can give. And it was invented by kids.

But how things change as we get older and our worldview becomes broader than what goes on during school hours where we are surrounded by friends and classmates. As grownups, when we gather we tend to just sit where there is an empty seat, probably not even paying attention to who we sit by or who sits by us. We look around for our friends and hope to sit near them. But we don't usually make a point of sitting next to a specific person, except for the understood spot next to a spouse or significant other, if we are lucky enough to have that. If we don't belong to anyone in particular, we ask if 'this seat is taken', hoping to snag an empty chair before someone else gets it, and hoping not to offend anyone by taking a seat that belongs to someone else. We're just part of the group, maybe without even a single close connection or best friend in the group. We're one of many, without a specific place next to anyone in particular.

When I heard the kid today wanting her friend to know that she wanted that seat beside her, I remembered how good it felt to hear those words. I smiled, because kids are so intense about the young-type things that rule your world when you're twelve years old. It's special to be somewhere with a group where one of your best friends claims the seat next to you, on purpose, because he or she wants to be beside you. It's a simple thing we don't think about with much depth when we are younger. As a grown up, it may even seem silly. But we never lose the desire to be in close proximity to our friends, as we did when we were younger.

What acceptance to know you have a place beside someone. What an honor to have someone who wants a place beside you. It's simple, but precious.

C.T.