My daughter is the complete opposite of me. She’s super affectionate. She hands out hugs freely and she talks to everyone. When I moved to Georgia anything that didn’t fit in my Cadillac didn’t go. This meant I barely had anything and I became a frequent shopper at the local Wally World.
I wanted to bake cookies – forgot I didn’t have a cookie sheet. I needed to put some papers together – another trip, I didn’t have paper clips. By the end of our first month here my daughter knew everyone employee at Walmart, at least it felt like it. She had to stop and say hi to everyone she remembered…and hug them. Everyone new “friend” she made I would have to give her the secret code I had made up, “PS” which stood for personal space. Something she was, and still is, completely unaware of.
I would grimace every time she would strike up a conversation with a random person walking by but then I decided it’s just who she is, plus all her talking helped. They owner of the corner gas station always let her get a free piece of candy, we knew about all the upcoming Douglasville events because of her random talks with strangers, and everyone, especially Ms. Kay, at the library would tell her which new books had just arrived as soon as we walked through the doors. I write this to say, my daughter is very friendly, she makes friends easily and yes, we will be all around the world, but that doesn’t matter to her.
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When she was three I took her to work with me during summer school programming. She went with the High-5 students. There was a little Asian girl in the class that didn’t speak any English. That summer, that little girl was my daughter’s best friend. She was the only child my daughter would play with. When I asked her why she told me, “I can teach her the ABCs in English.” And sure enough, she did, she taught her the animals too.
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