It was morning break at Hermes Middle. As students exited their classrooms the campus quickly transformed from a quiet, serene set of buildings into an eruption of activity and movement. Chloe navigated from her classroom to her favorite break-time hang-out spot with kids walking in both directions. She walked forward as if on auto-pilot, saving her mental energy for the bantering that would be happening soon once she settled in her favorite spot with her friends.
Chloe and the kids walking in the opposite direction navigated so that shoulders never touched and bodies never collided. But then one of the larger, more developed boys in her grade, Bobby, approached from the opposite direction and suddenly commanded, “Move!” Chloe was startled and simply moved out of his way, wondering why he was so abrasive. And then she found out why. “Check it out,” Bobby spoke up among his friend laughing. “I told that girl to move and she moved!”
The whole exchange made Chloe uncomfortable. She was the object of somebody’s joke. Bobby was one of the mean, popular boys. She didn’t want to confront him directly for fear of some kind of payback. Likewise, she didn’t want to vent to just anyone because she did not want to amplify her embarrassment in any way. But she wanted to confide in a peer who would understand. But instead of confiding in Patty, Gayle, Katherine, Robbie or even Holly, Chloe chose to confide in Cooper.
While Chloe was on a sleepover at Gayle’s house, Gayle introduced Chloe to Cooper on a Facebook instant messaging session that migrated to text messaging from their mobile phones once Gayle’s mom told the girls to turn off the computer. Chloe and Cooper had known of one another before the chat from Gayle’s house but had never actually met. The girls spent over four hours text chatting with Cooper and in the weeks that followed, Chloe and Cooper spent even more hours in text dialog on Facebook and on their mobile phones.
Early in the dialog, Chloe and Cooper established this as a non-romantic friendship. Cooper confided his interest in Gayle while Chloe confided her interest in another boy. For over a month now, Chloe and Cooper have been getting to know one another. Chloe knows for example that Cooper is slowly learning Portuguese because he likes the Brazilian alternative band, Kleiderman. He puts the lyrics to their songs into Google Translate so he can learn what they mean. He’s been augmenting Google translate with a library book on Portuguese grammar. Every so often Chloe gets a text from Cooper in Portuguese which she asks him to translate.
So the evening after the rude treatment from Bobby, Chloe told Cooper the whole story to Cooper from her mobile phone in a series of text message. ‘hes a doosh’ Cooper wrote. And he proceeded to tell Chloe about an incident in which Bobby mistreated him and then another incident when Bobby was particularly cruel to another student.
‘geeez bobbi is a todal deebag isnt he im glad im not the only one’ Chloe texted back.
As a parent, I consider the kind of social interaction shared between Cooper and Chloe to be extremely important developmentally for both boys and girls. Chloe knows a handful of girls who want nothing to do with any boys unless it is romantic. Perhaps some parents support this way of thinking. I believe it is both antiquated and unhealthy.
At around this age, attraction suddenly gets boys interested in girls and girls interested in boys. For years leading up to this point kids were almost completely interested in their own gender. And the best non-romantic friendships going forward will still generally shared among people of the same gender. That said, I believe an important part of developing into a healthy adult who can enjoy a meaningful romance involves forming genuine, emotionally-healthy, non-dating, non-family friendships with people of both genders.
Right now for Chloe, it is mainly only Cooper who plays the role of non-romantic guy-friend. The two continue to text. Chloe is learning a little bit more about how boys think and Cooper is learning a little bit more about how girls think. And they are gaining exposure to each other’s perspective. Chloe would never have thought to check out a Brazilian alternative band on her own. But the other day, I saw Chloe get onto Youtube to check out Kleiderman and I suspected Cooper had everything to do with it.
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