It was spooky the way that Randy always showed up just as Beth was ready to leave for school. The first couple of times that it happened I didn’t take note. But on the fourth or fifth day in a row I asked Beth, “Does Randy call you or something to find out when you’re going to be ready?”
“That is a silly thing to ask,” she said. “Of course he doesn’t. He just has this knack for knowing things like that. You wouldn’t understand.”
That meant of course that she didn’t want to take the time to try to explain it to me. So, I kept investigating. I discovered that everyone had these knacks in Beth’s school. Everyone’s knack was different but they all had one. Some people had multiple knacks. But no one over twenty seemed to have them. People who had them when they turned twenty kept them but no one acquired a knack after they turned twenty.
“What is your knack?” I asked Beth.
She blushed and said, “I couldn’t possibly tell you.”
That left me wondering for a minute. “Why not?” I asked her.
“You don’t have the context to understand,” she said. “And, no, I can’t help you there. I have been putting it together all my life and there’s just no way to explain it.”
I started to speak but she put her finger on my lips. “Weren’t there things that you couldn’t explain to your parents? Even if you had tried to explain them they didn’t know how things worked in your world,” she looked at me intently. She really wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I mean, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how because you have similar experiences, shared experiences, you can communicate things with small fragments of sentences, words with layers of context wrapped around them. Knowing looks. Gestures. Don’t you have those things with your friends?” she said.
“I … I guess I may have felt that way with one or two of my friends at one time or another.”
“Well, we all feel that way most of the time. It comes from concentrating our text messages so that we don’t have to spend so much time typing them. Over time the context grows and the length of the actual communication shrinks. We have our own language in addition to the one that we speak with the rest of the world.”
“I have suspected as much for some time,” I said. “How do I find out more about these knacks?”
“I expect you will just have to find someone who is willing to talk about it with you. As for me right now, I’m done. Maybe I’ll feel like talking more tomorrow. Again, maybe I won’t.”
I nodded. “Have a good day at school.” I noticed the door opening behind her as Randy stuck his head in.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“I always am, aren’t I?” she replied.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the people you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.