BFFs

I was standing outside the car, waiting for Penny to collect her crap and get out (she gets testy if I try to do anything for her, even just opening the door, so I usually let her do it in her own time, unless we're running late). Behind me was a larger car engaged in a similar disgorgement of students.

"Penny!" I turned to look, and a girl about Penny's age was climbing out of the back of the minivan. Penny hadn't even opened her door yet, so she hadn't heard the hail.

I needn't have feared, though. Penny finished fishing her backpack up off the floor, and glanced out the window, and her face lit up like Christmas. "Ashley!" she exclaimed, and scrambled to gather her kit and throw off the clinging seatbelt loop and open her door.

The girls clasped hands as soon as Penny's feet hit the asphalt. Ashley blissfully ignored her mother's instructions about walking to the sidewalk and then going down to the crosswalk as she and Penny began babbling to each other. I gave Ashley's mother one of those, "It's okay, I'll handle it," smiles and gently herded the two of them toward the sidewalk, and coaxed Ashley to actually walk on it instead of in the street beside it.

Penny turned to me as we entered the crosswalk. "I told Ashley that I would be her friend forever," she announced proudly.

"That's fantastic, sweetie," I said. "It's good to have friends." I'm glad she's finally really warming up to some of the other kindergartners. At the beginning of the year, she was rebuffing all advances and stoutly swearing she had no friends.

"Yeah," Penny agreed, "because otherwise I might be lonely!"

"If you're lonely and you're sitting on a bench," Ashley put in, "then someone will come over and say, 'Do you want to be my friend?' and you'll say 'Yes,' and then you won't be lonely anymore!" (Spoken like a true introvert.)

Penny refused my suggestion that I leave early and let her wait for the bell with just Ashley, but she didn't let go of Ashley's hand while they waited. When the bell rang and we slipped around the corner into the kindergarten hall, Penny gave me a one-armed hug, and a kiss, and then held up her free hand for her "special" kiss, and then carefully switched hands with Ashley before allowing me to kiss her other hand.

I watched them walk down the hall together, the best of friends, and I smiled.