Story Time!

Ok. So This is where planning would be SO useful. I travel a lot. For today's post I was looking for a picture of me as a 12 year old. It is at home. I am not. So I am not actually 12 in the photo... just use your imagination. Also my mother had much longer hair... it WAS the 90s.

When I was a kid, even more so than I am now, I was of the mindset that strangers were new friends I just hadn't met yet. In the checkout lane at the grocery store my mother would just shake her head as I, comfortably seated in the cart, invited the people behind us in line to come over and play. My father once let me go in the mall to see how far I would go before looking back. I didn't.

Now my parents got divorced when I was very young and my brother even more so. He is almost 3 years younger than I am and was not much more than an infant. Several years down the road my parents were living in different states. My mother was in Wisconsin and my father in Texas. This is obviously no small drive for the weekends so we spent summers and some holidays with my father and some holidays and the rest of the year with my mother. All of this was really my introduction into the world of air travel. We did a lot of it.

At one point my brother and I were walking down the street with my mother to go to a friend's house and a car pulled up next to me. I was walking far ahead of my family members which, not surprisingly, arose a state of panic in my mother. This may be a good time to explain a few things regarding my mother.

My mother is one of my best friends. I talk to her on an extremely regular basis and about most everything. She is a lovely woman. She also is very anxious. Anxious to the point of over protective. It's endearing how much she cares for her children. She panics when driving in fast traffic. She worries. Always.

This car was going to steal her child forever.

My mom starts running down the street. To her horror I am actually TALKING to the stranger in the car. My friendly nature supporting that I would talk to any strange person and probably climb in their car to go and play. I was around twelve years old at this point and not actually likely to climb into strange vehicles. She is rushing and rushing and I'm talking and talking.

When she caught up to me the nice gentleman in the car explained that he had sat next to my brother and I on flight some two or three weeks prior and complimented her on our manners and how polite we were. My mother was of course relieved even though I was still getting the "how dare you scare me like that" look. Afterwards he waved and drove off and on we went.

My mother, thankfully, still had a beating heart. I was oblivious to her concern still at this point. This is why being an extroverted kid in a family of introverts is fun.