Melinda and I were fast friends since i moved into the neighborhood when i was six. I remember many miserable days sitting around the house, too shy to go out and introduce myself to any of the neighborhood kids. Then one day the girl who lived next door (I knew she did because i had watched her out of my bedroom window playing with the other neighborhood children) marched confidently up to my front door and told my mother that she thought that i needed to get outside more. She had seen me when we had moved in, she explained, and after that at school. She told my mother that she didn't think that it was healthy for a by my age to be inside all of the time. My mother considered her words quite seriously and told Melinda that she thought that she was a very smart little girl.

submitted by Scott
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
February 1997