Photo by Tolmacho, courtesy pixabay.

Attention parents: when you go to kindergarten orientation this month, take a good look around at the other parents. These are the people you’re going to spend the next 13 years of your life with.

Those of you who did the co-op preschool thing are better prepared for this than the rest of us. For me, it was quite a shock when my son started kindergarten and began dictating our social life.

While I’m told that most parents decide who their children are friends with – at least until they’re 8 or 9 — our son must be precocious. He’s only 5 and already his activities are filling our calendar.

Luckily he has good taste in friends.

It started out innocently enough. Koss met a few kids, and through them a few more. They played together at school, then after school they started having play dates. So far so good. You meet the other kids’ parents, inspect their house for hidden artillery, quicksand and meth labs, finding none, you’ve got two to three hours of afternoon freedom. (The “you” usually being my husband, since I’m almost always at work.)

Of course reciprocal play dates involve some planning on our part, but for a parent of an only child, having another child over to play can sometimes be the next best thing to an extra hour’s sleep. Not that my husband is asleep while your precious bundle is doing fire science with my child. He’s just resting his eyes a moment, behind the locked door.

Then there are the birthday parties. “Either invite the whole class or mail the invitations” was our teacher’s instruction. Apparently most kindergarten parents dislike the post office the way I do the Laundromat.

We started bulk loading our gift closet in the fall, and now replenish our stock on a regular basis.

Somehow 20 kids in his class have multiplied into 20,000 birthday parties. Is my child the only one who was born in the summer? Was there some secret no one told me about that I could have avoided spending the last months of my pregnancy sweating in the swimming pool?

It’s not that kid’s birthday parties aren’t fun. I’ve developed a certain affection for watching kids whack the piñata, and I’m as much of a sucker for a sugar and lard rose as the next gal, but I can’t help feeling a little envious when my pre-parental colleagues talk about the great parties they went to that weekend, or the R-rated movies they get to see.

Then there are sports. It started out with AYSO soccer. Even though our son had shown no particular inclination for kicking anything other than the furniture, or running anywhere other than into our arms, my husband and I thought it might be fun for him to learn how to play.

It was fun, but not for the reasons I expected. We liked the coach and the other parents.

Koss turned out to be the Mr. Congeniality of peewee soccer.

While he wasn’t always sure which goal was his and which was his opponent’s, he did get to know the other teams’ ins and outs. He knew their favorite ice cream flavors, most beloved Power Rangers and whether they preferred Cartoon Network or Toon Disney. This is because he spent the games chatting, rarely paying attention to the action going on down the field.

While he never scored a goal, he never left a game without a slew of phone numbers. Not many college level soccer players can say that.

As he added new soccer friends to his dance card, we saw our own social life boogie out the door. Brunch? Sorry, we’ve got soccer. Lunch? Can’t do it, birthday party. Dinner? Nope, Koss set up a pizza night for us with one of his new buddies and their family.

No wonder we never see our friends who have four kids! They’ve penciled us in for summer – August of 2007 looks pretty free.

Now it’s T-Ball season, which is the perfect-paced game for a boy who likes to talk more than he likes to play. Waiting for all of the kids to go through the batting line-up bored his friend Jared to tears, but for Koss it’s the perfect time for socializing.

And what do you know; it’s pretty fun for us too.

I guess I should be happy he’s so outgoing. A study at Harvard University found that reserved children are more likely to be violent than their outgoing peers. Hmmm … so far Koss has shown what I consider to be a normal 5-year-old level of violence, he’s as likely to give a hug as a karate chop as a way of greeting a friend … or a stranger who’s about to become one.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on April 21, 2005.