When I was in elementary school, a boy came up to me during break. He’d been playing soccer with his friends and the ball went sideways somehow, and ended up near me. He went after it to get it back, but stopped next to me. I was reading. I did that every break, just like he played soccer every break.
I noticed him standing there, but didn’t say anything. When he didn’t seem to be moving anytime soon, I looked at him.
He was staring at me. I stared back.
“Why are you reading all the time?” he said.
I thought it was a stupid question, so I probably sounded a bit annoyed when I asked him: “Why do you play soccer all the time?”, expecting him to get angry or make fun of me.
But the boy, I’ve forgotten his name or never knew it anyways, just tilted his head a bit. He nudged the ball with the tip of his foot, then kicked it back to the other boys. “Mhm. Okay,” he said, and ran off.
He didn’t do anything extraordinary. We didn’t become friends, we didn’t talk again and I can’t even remember his face. All he did was to say okay.
Maybe that’s all we can do sometimes; saying okay even when we don’t understand.
Moami 