On my birthday, I sat in the café across the road from the passport office. I needed a new passport. So, on the day I was born, I had to confirm and justify who I was.
You have to get your application countersigned by someone 'of standing in the community' who has known you for at least two years. I had been lost for anyone to ask, until my mother suggested a friend living near the house I was born in. When she came to the bit confirming how long she had known me, she looked at me.
"When were you born?" she asked, and then wrote '46 years', as the length of our friendship, on the form.
I loved the idea of having a friendship lasting since I first arrived in the open air only 100 yards from where the form was being signed. She wrote that she had known me since I had existed. Can a friendship start at birth? I decided it can, because a friendship only needs one active partner. If the other cannot yet speak or walk, then they can still receive friendship, and can return it in time.
