My Acquaintances

My Acquaintances
I come across many people in my life. They are my acquaintances, which are relationships less intimate than friendships. I always see them in the same places and participating in the same activities.   My acquaintances are widely varied. I regularly interact with children, college students, and middle-aged adults. They each behave quite differently from each other.   Some talk without even taking a breath between words, others speak little to none, and some speak without really saying anything at all.
The first group, the ones I interact with the most, is children. Children are quite free in their speech. They enjoy talking and often have long narratives about what is happening in their life and the lives of their families. Bailee is a perfect example. She told me just last week about her trip to the zoo in New Orleans. She told me about the fight her parents had on the way, each animal she saw, and everything she ate and drank while she was gone. She spared no detail. Cayley, a nine year old girl in my group, tells me every week about how many times she and her best friend have fought and about what they fought about. She leaves out no details. Even young boys are talkative. Matthew always tells me about his football games. He explains the whole game to me, play-by-play. Most of the time he tells me part of the story in Chinese, his native language, even though I do not understand.
The second set of people I interact with regularly is college students. They are quite different from my children contacts, in that, they are not nearly as talkative and tend to share only what is absolutely necessary. I do not even know the names of these people that I talk to every week. For example, the young man who sits next to me in history class nods at me when we enter class, instead of giving a vocal greeting. The girl near me in literature only speaks when she requires information she may have missed in a previous class.   Although this happens on a...