This morning I dropped Strudel off at her summer camp. I had to fill out the metric ton of paperwork they make you fill out every year, so I was standing at the counter for quite a while. A fancy business-type lady walked in with her small daughter, who was clinging a bit.

“I don’t WANT to stay here,” the girl stage whispered to her mother, who was writing a check for the week and making sure her paperwork was all in order. The girl had huge eyes, taking everything in, and was spattered with freckles that were a lot like Strudel’s. “Mommy, there are only BIG KIDS here, no little kids.”

I could feel waves of her tiny panic wafting over to me. I have a soft spot for kids like this. When I was her age I remember getting ditched at an in-home daycare where the resident toddler, a bruiser at three who probably weighed as much as I did, pinned me down and bit me daily. I remember the daisy dukes-wearing babysitter who answered our newspaper ad and smoked in the house, putting her butts in her Coke cans, and entertained her visiting tow truck-driving boyfriend after my mother said “no visitors.” How exciting it was to have a giant truck with flashing lights in our driveway! The only words I remember coming out of her mouth were “Don’t tell your mom, okay, kid?” I always wondered if people who called me “kid” knew my name. I had one babysitter who saved my immortal soul from burning forever by talking me into accepting Jesus, whom I was only vaguely familiar with. I remember the babysitter who had my mother good and snookered for a long time but showed me movies like “The Thing” and “Creepshow” at night while my parents were at movies or in vice dens surrounded by mountains of cocaine, I don’t even fucking know. What do parents do when they go out? Who knows.

“How old are you, six?” I said to the little girl waiting with her mother.

“I am five and three quarters,” she said, turning sweet eyes up to me.

“Well! You’re in luck,” I said. “My daughter is here, and she is six. She loves making new friends.” (Okay, that was not totally true. Strictly speaking, Strudel adheres to a “do not make me cut a bitch” policy.) Strudel bounded up from reacquainting herself with the upstairs. I had overheard the girl’s name, so I took the opportunity to introduce them.

“Olivia, this is Strudel. Strudel, this is Olivia and she is almost six and is new today. Do you think you can show her the ropes?” Strudel said “hi” and nodded.

“See, Olivia, you have a new friend already!” Olivia’s mother exclaimed. When I was six I always thought syrupy moms like this were total drips and highly suspicious. They reminded me of something my own mother would say, who never really knew how to talk to children in situations like this as if they were real people, and instead acted like it was a bad TV show or something. Who makes friends after just being introduced? No one I wanted to know. The girls looked at each other. They knew they weren’t friends just yet.

I picked up Strudel in the afternoon and she told me long stories about the highs and lows of her day. Winning a trivia game had netted her seven M&Ms, but she lost a game that sounded like a cross between dodgeball and Quiddich.

“Did you hang out with Olivia today?” I asked. “Were you nice to her?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you guys friends yet?”

“NO! She’s mean!”

“What did she say to you?” I asked.

“She told me she didn’t want to play with me and she didn’t want to be my friend.”

“Hmm, I’m sorry, people are like that sometimes, eh?”

“Yeah,” Strudel said. “It’s okay, though, because she got stuck with the girl who cried all day.”