Precious

There's a little girl that lives across the street. Let's call her Precious. Precious is 5. She joined the gang of neighborhood kids when she was 3, so she is well seasoned when it comes to roaming aimlessly, picking people's flowers, and standing in your flower bed talking to you through your open window when you are trying to read books to your kids.

Emily absolutely loves playing with Precious. They giggle and frolic, dig for worms, and ride their scooters like there is no tomorrow. Precious used to come over a lot. She would hang out for hours on end, and I would be in awe that nobody seemed to know where she was. Ever.

One evening, Andy went to pick up a pizza, and was subsequently verbally attacked by Precious as she demanded that he give her a piece. She was vicious; I heard the whole thing. Because we had company that evening, he did not comply. As a result, she dug a giant hole in our flower bed.

Precious regularly uses our garden hose as her personal source for H2O. Quite often, we will return home to find the whole front of our property soaked and muddy little Precious-sized footprints leaving the scene.

Precious has a brother named Money. Money came over with Precious a couple of times and he cleaned Emily's room from top to bottom while they were playing. How utterly unexpected, right? He is 7 but he looks like he is 20. I swear the kid has a five o'clock shadow.

After a while, I would get all vexed by Precious' presence. She was just so intrusive and it really irked me. Go leave your muddy footprints somewhere else. Yell into someone else's living room for a change. Where is your own family? When this last thought entered my grumpy brain, something changed. I started to see Precious in a different light. Poor kid, left to her own devices. Left to wander the cul-de-sac until well after dark. It wasn't her fault she doesn't know how to act. Nobody ever showed her. Awww. My heart melted. How can I begrudge her?

This brings me to now. Precious is my new project. Since clearly nobody else wants her around, I decided that I do. I hope to have a fully reformed Precious by the end of the summer. I'll let you know how it all turns out.