THE PEOPLE WE LIKE

I asked the Internet to find me a question to answer. It’s part of my October commitment to keep on writing, no matter what is happening in my life. Here is what the Internet asked me: “If your parents were just people your own age, would you like them enough to be friends with them?”
“Well,” I said in response, “I’d say this is a moot point. If my parents were my own age I wouldn’t even know them. We wouldn’t tend to bump into each other. My parent’s were/are rural people. You’d find them farming, or shopping at the Co-op, or throwing rocks at the curling rink. Somewhere along the line I turned into a city girl not often seen on farms, in Co-op stores or cheering on the curlers. Generally your friends hang out where you hang out.”
“Insufficient!” said the Internet. “You are ducking the question.”
“Yes,” said I, “I admit to ducking the question. But I do have an excellent excuse.”
“And what is your excellent excuse?” said the Internet.
“My excuse,” I replied, “and I think it’s a good excuse, my excuse for ducking the question of whether I’d like my parents enough to be friends with them turns out to be the wrong question. The question that perplexes me is: if I were the age of my kids, would they like me enough to want to be my friend? And, practical person that I am, the mother of city kids, I then must wonder: where would I have to hang out to meet my kids, and what would I have to do to get my kids to choose me if they met me there?”
My mind, in response, strays to unexpected places. Picture me having fun at poker games, paintball centres, evenings playing world of war Craft, scrap-booking parties, smoking on frozen front porches.
Now, back to the question. I don’t think I’ll answer the question. Suffice it to say that I love my parents. I love my kids. And I think I may have inadvertently come upon a few good reasons to maintain the generation gap.