At the camp I helped at a couple weeks ago, I had this conversation with a little 8 year old girl. I'm not entirely sure how the subject came up, but the part I remember is the interesting part and the one most relevant anyway. She was talking about her many "boyfriends" and then said this: "boys like girls with freckles." I looked at this fair skinned, freckle-less, pretty little girl and said, "but YOU don't have freckles." She responded "I don't have any problem getting boyfriends."
(Note: she was speaking of whatever an 8 year old's notion of a boyfriend is... there was nothing age inappropriate going on.)
(Though, it still catches me off guard because I didn't even notice boys until I was about 10... and never called anyone boyfriend until well after high school. I'm what one might call a "late bloomer." I think I only stopped playing with Barbies because I thought the other high schoolers would make fun of me if they knew.)
Moving on.
She continued, "I have, like, 4 boyfriends." I responded, "Man, Jill*, I need you to give me dating advice." Her response? "Get a lot of freckles!" (I didn't start over with the "but you don't have freckles!" routine again. I could see it was a fruitless path.)
Life is simpler for an 8 year old, most of the time.
I'm just glad I'm starting to get more freckles.
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