This week I’ll treat you to a new theory that my friend thought of! Meet my teenage niece’s best friend and how children solve a major problem for their mother, along with what to do when you have time hanging heavy on your hands. Jump in…

You may remember that Rachael aced a bet in class when her boyfriend, Charlie, gave her a teddy bear. It was like a discreet understanding among the girls in her class that whoever gets a teddy from her love before the others, wins the bet. Rachael totally nabbed that. But over the months, this teddy has become her trusted companion! Talk of teenage romance! This teddy is her confidant, her friend and her agony uncle. And there’s an added plus to this: whatever the teddy hears remains undisclosed and that’s very important for a private person like Rachael.

Liz, her mom, tells me that Rachael was heard talking to the teddy on the night before her exam. Liz also tells me that Rachael cuddled her teddy with tears over a bad fight with Charlie. Sometimes the teddy is ensconced smugly on the chair next to Rachael at the dining table. Though I had a laugh over it and so did Adrian when I told him, our female friends like Megan and Kate actually said things like “Oh! How cute!” and “How romantic!” I’m sure my female readers would do the same while all you guys may be having a hearty laugh!

Irina is the last person you would find who talks in metaphorical terms. So this came as a huge surprise to us when this figurative theory was unleashed on us. Irina walked in late at our last get together. We were already into a couple of drinks. Adrian suddenly remembered that he had to make a call to Cathy. As an aside, that’s his latest behavioral fad. He calls Cathy every other time, checking on her lunch, dinner, snacks, whatever. We are all waiting for him to get the snub down soon, because every time he overdoes things, Cathy cuts him down to size.

Anyway, so Adrian was making this call when Irina snatched the phone out of his hands! Adrian looked flustered, more shocked than surprised. We were looking at Irina, questions written in bold, capital letters on our faces. Irina said, “Have you realized that our private moments are vanishing off just like polar bears?” Adrian recovered enough to say, “What has polar bears got to do with my phone?” Irina shrugged and said, “Nothing! Except that you are eating away Cathy’s private time!” Before Adrian could flare up, Megan snatched the phone off her hands and returned it. Thankfully Cathy called right then and Adrian proudly showed the cell phone display to Irina!

Routine kills the spontaneity in you and pushes you into a maze. Getting out of it becomes difficult. You feel claustrophobic, suffocated. That’s when you have got to take things in your hand to break the mold. Donna was completely done with living the same moments every single day. The worst part of her life, as Donna told me, was planning a meal every single day. “Every morning it feels like a daunting task to make a breakfast because I run out of ideas about what to make!” she complained. It went on for some time before Emily, her daughter, solved the problem.

Emily suggested that over the weekend, Donna could leave the planning to her and her brother, Ethan. They will draw up a list of meals that will be made over the week, and paste the list up on the fridge door. That way Donna could just take a look at the list and get going. This is working well for them. The children are making sure that they keep the fancy meals for the Sundays and only the basic egg and bacon stuff for the weekdays. Donna feels a weight off her and you cannot blame her when you find her talking highly about her children.

We all spend some time occasionally waiting. It could be at the dentist, at the traffic or at the coffee line at Starbucks. What do we usually do when we are in this state of involuntary inactivity? We plug on our earphones and blare away some tracks on the i-pod. We whip out our cell phones to update our status messages on Facebook or just play around with our email or write fake text messages. Have you ever thought of making use of this time to renew some old connections? How about writing to that high school mate you haven’t heard for a long time?

The idea struck me when I was waiting to pay my grocery bills. You can blame me for doing things that one would usually do and suddenly I decided to write some mails to my old pals back in Pasadena. It worked like a charm. The response was so great that I’m tempted to believe like they were waiting for me to write to them! That one inspired moment got me back in touch with a lot of nice people who were slowly slipping into oblivion. If you are stranded somewhere, I’d suggest you reach out. In our busy lives, it’s difficult to make time out anyway. Surely those good old times deserve your residual time.

Here’s a wonderful Frank Gelett Burgess quote for those who are thinking twice about reconnecting with old bonds: “Old friends, we say, are best, when some sudden disillusionment shakes our faith in a new comrade.”