Hungarian Love Story

Any day that I ride the 7:20 bus in the morning, I am witness to a cute little love crusade enacted by 10-12 year old kids.  I don’t know how old they are, and I have never been good at guessing ages, but they are in elementary school I know that.  There is a young girl, lets call her Sally, and she has two girlfriends that she hangs with at the bus stop.  Then there is a young boy, we’ll call him Joe, who hangs with his posse of boys.  They wait for the 7:20 bus every day, and whenever I’m there, I get to see a bit of elementary school love flowing.  Sally always arrives before Joe and his boys, and she waits and watches in the direction that he comes from.  When she sees him turn the corner, she always lets her friends know that he’s coming (quite honestly the friends could care less, but they are her wingmen, so they know they are supposed to at least act excited).  The first time I noticed their interactions was on a cold December morning.  Sally had one of her girls ask Joe if he had a Kleenex she could have.  Now, if you’ve been reading my blog with any consistency, you know that no Hungarian ever leaves home without an adequate supply of Kleenex- especially in these cold winter months.  It was a ploy to talk to them, but certainly not a subtle one.  I suppose they are only in elementary school so they don’t have the practice that many of us older folks have in “playing the games” of flirting.  Joe looked around at his friends – rolling his eyes, and pulled a Kleenex out of his pocket to give to Sally.  Her friend dutifully returned to her (because of course the groups stand about 10 feet apart watching each other) and gave her the Kleenex.  At that exact moment, Sally pulled a wad of Kleenex to the edge of her coat pocket and showed her friend and giggled.  She used the Kleenex for a fake wiping of her nose, and batted her eyes toward Joe in thanks.  The boys were of course talking about the girls and how stupid they are, and the girls decided that it was love – after all, he shared a Kleenex – that’s love isn’t it? 

The next encounter I witnessed (and they have been few and far between because lets be honest- if I can take the 7:40 bus and make it to class on time, why would I bother with the earlier bus?) involved Sally standing post at the expected 10 feet away from Joe – and them exchanging (not so subtle) glances with one another.  Often times, Sally will have her friends watch Joe’s group, and Joe always employs the help of his boys to watch Sally’s group.  Then they report back to each other – basically stating who is watching who. 

It’s funny to watch them once we get on the bus because they can NEVER get on the bus through the same entrance – then one might know that they like the other one – so the boys always get on in the middle, and the girls in the back.  They then proceed to glance at each other the entire trip to their elementary school.  I always go through the middle door as well, because there is more room to stand on the bus and I feel more comfortable there.  This also means that I get to be witness to the glancing that occurs on the bus ride.  I do have to point out that one reason I like standing by these boys is because one of them is a spitting image of Jonathan Taylor Thomas circa season 2 of “Tool Time.”  He’s the cutest little Hungarian boy who is thoroughly put off by the whole Sally Joe situation, and makes it quite clear to Joe.  He cracks me up. 

I managed to (not so sneakily) take a picture of the group the other morning… click on it so you can see the looks in their eyes.  I don’t know who the adult is in the photo- but I can tell you that she wears exercise clothes every time I see her at the bus stop.  Maybe she’s a gym teacher?  All the kids in the group know her, so I’m assuming she works at the school.  In the picture above “Sally” is the one with the blue hair band – she is looking at Joe who is wearing the blue hat.  Jonathan Taylor Thomas is in the white hat – unfortunately you can’t see how cute he is, but I can only be so creepy taking pictures of strange young children.  I wish I could understand more of their conversations so I could hear what they are really thinking… oh young love.