How I found my boyfriend in the Chindsgi
My oldest friend is called Patrick. We met in the sandpit at nursery school and we had instant chemistry. In my memory, he suddenly just stood in front of me, we sniffed at each other like young dogs and then spontaneously and simultaneously decided that we were friends. Much has been written in world literature about love at first sight, but not a word about the truly amazing friendship skills of kindergarten children.
But why do children like each other? What criteria are used to form a friendship at the age of four? A study that is considered a classic in developmental psychology investigated this question: 36 children aged between three and nine years - who did not know each other beforehand - were divided into groups of two, who met three times each to play. The researchers found that it always worked when the children were able to have fun together.
We also had other things in common: an aversion to rice pudding and tidying up and a fondness for fantastic stories.
Of course, this is more complex than it sounds. In order to have fun, both children have to behave in a way that suits the other, they have to master the balancing act between friendliness and eagerness to please, somehow the idea of pleasure (or aversion) has to be polarised in the same way. The researchers concluded that it is about similarities, about seeing the world through the same eyes and also about how we feel in the presence of the other.
What connects the friends
Patrick and I had other things in common besides height: an aversion to rice pudding and tidying up and a fondness for fantastic stories. «You see that man down by the lake,» Patrick once whispered to me as we carefully peered over the fence of the kindergarten, «he pulled a plastic bag out of the water earlier. Probably a dead body.»
Patrick, and I loved him for this straight away, seemed to have internalised that the truth is too boring not to add a few good stories to it. We told each other robbery stories that were not tall tales, but expressions of a longing that there must be more than reality has to offer. A longing that has never completely left me to this day and that often makes me think of Patrick, whose reality was always a mixture of fantasy and silk. In his presence, it seemed to me, I saw the world a little differently. The normal became absurd, the grey colourful, the tragic funny. It was often the other way round.
We attended the same school for a while, then he moved away with his family. Years later, we met again in Berlin. I was different, he was different. Then I moved on. Came back. Left again.
We saw each other sporadically, but we always found each other, in our thoughts and in real life. Because part of me is still the boy in the sandpit who wishes someone would turn up who could see ghosts between the trees.
