Who do you know?

Or maybe the question is who knows you?

I'm not talking about simple familiarity or recognition. I'm using a deeper "know."

Through a variety reasons, some of which I understand and some of which I don't, I know hundreds and hundreds of people in the superficial sense. And am known by those types of numbers in the same sense. You know, recognize you in public places, maybe are able to place your name from some encounter in the past.

Yet I've come to realize very recently that I am pretty much unknown in the deeper version. I've been in this life for more than half a century now and there are maybe three people at tops who might know me. And I'm likely stretching that.

An example. I recently went to a birthday party for a one-year-old. Yeah, I'm much too old for the clowns-and-cake-smeared-on-the-face crowd. But I simply love children and their company. I've always felt if children and dogs loved you, you were all right and to hell with the rest. The rest, though, expressed almost unanimous amazement that I clung so tightly to such young ones. They seemed to believe I had no interest, patience or gentility to be that way.

I'm well aware a big portion of this is self inflicted. To say I've been guarded with my revelations is an understatement. I've been downright distrustful. But it hasn't been much of a challenge to be that way because I've almost never met anyone who probed, questioned or showed much of a curiosity.

Back to the three or so who might exist. They lack a pattern. Gender doesn't matter. Time around one another isn't a factor, one possibility I see about once a year, another once every decade. It's not long revealing talks that create knowledge either. There maybe a foundation there, but in general I think we just "get it" when it comes to one another.

Nor is it a trade. There are many more people I think I know, I understand and have vision of where they are and why. But I stay at about three.

Maybe I sometimes expect too much of human interaction. Maybe I've created impossible standards for uncommon connection. Maybe I'll just never know.