Auto-Motive II

"I've brought some friends over to play," Jeff announced as he returned from the Port-a-Potties, at last night's 4th of July festivities. Two little blond boys eagerly grabbed a few of the three dozen Hot Wheels that Jeff always has on hand.

I was slightly taken aback. "Does your mom know you are over here on our blanket?" I asked. Moments later, a tall blond man squatted down beside our encampment.

"Jeff, did you ask the dad if these guys could come over and play?" Evidently not.

This hardly qualifies as public mortification that I am used to with my boys. Still, I know that a teenager making overtures to a 3- and a 5-year-old is odd. If the dad was alarmed by his preschoolers being shanghaied by a much older boy, he did not show it.

Without formal preliminaries, the four kids dug into the cars. "How did you know these boys were interested in cars?" "We brought a few ourselves," the dad told me. How to explain that Jeff easily can smell out toy cars in a dense crowd of 12,000 people?

We adults made general small talk while the kids played. And then Jeff summarily dismissed them, "It's getting dark. You have to go now."