Card-Board Friends

It’s really tough for a shy, introvert kid to make friends and even tougher to find friends with similar interests. I mean playing with cardboard boxes is not everyone’s cup of tea.

I was never the kind of kid who would just go and introduce himself to a new group of kids. That would be a nightmare, no, I was more like a predator on a hunt.

 I would go to the nearest playground and first study a group from a distance analyzing their behavior and deducing their interests from what they were talking about or what they were playing. A group with more than 5 members was automatically blacklisted.

 After zeroing in on a group, I would look out for the least animated member of the group, usually the one who talks the least. I would then wait for that kid to break away from the herd and approach him or her, but mostly a HIM (because approaching a HER required a whole new level of strategy), undetected and strike, hoping he would lead me back to his herd.

 Making friends was by no means an easy task for me, but what I lacked in physical friends I made it up with imaginary ones. I would let my imagination go wild.

You would be surprised by how versatile a card box can be. On one day it could serve as the control room of my star-ship and on another day it could be a giant robot attacking earth and why would you need new friends when you could be friends with the entire crew of a star-ship or be an accomplice to a giant robot attacking earth. Sometimes, I would even let my younger brother tag along on my adventures but always as a second in command, never the commander because it’s not my fault that I was born first.

Today, making friends is still not an easy task but I have gotten way better. I don’t really remember at what point in my life did I completely phase out my cardboard friends and replace them with the digital ones but every now and then when I look at a card board box lying around my card-board friends come alive. They were as real as any friend can be.