1-24-08
One little girl, we’ll call her Amy, thought that she was old enough to walk to school on her own. I guess she didn’t want mom crimping her style. After all, a kids got a reputation to keep.

Her mother, we’ll call her Julie, disagreed. At the tender age of 5, she thought that her daughter was much too young to be walking to school by herself. The school was several miles away and crossed several busy streets to get there. Mother and daughter got into a spirited argument over the subject.

Amy, being the strong-willed child that she is, hatched a plan to show her mother just how wrong she was. So the next morning, she got up early, snuck out of the house, and set out before first light to walk to school. As it turns out, her mother may have been right after all. That’s because she got lost somewhere along the way. So she decided to use a trick she says she learned from her old home in Arizona to get where she needed to be: Hitchhiking. She would later explain how people in her hometown would use that same trick when they needed rides.

A woman who was driving along on her way to work noticed Amy. It was hard not to. She says the little girl was walking amongst traffic with her thumb up, and she had to swerve to keep from hitting the child. It’s an awfully good thing she noticed her. I’d hate to hear how this story ended if she hadn’t. So she pulled over to the side to offer a ride.

The woman also noticed the little girl had a backpack on and appeared ready for class. “Do you need a ride to school?” the lady asked. The girl responded with a nod of the head and enthusiastic “Uh-huh!” The woman was able to find the child’s school and turned her over to school staff. The school administrators contacted the child’s mother and reunited the two, safe and sound.

The moral of the story: Never argue with 5-year-olds. Or maybe it’s chain them to their bed after you do. Or maybe there is no moral to this story. We just thought it was interesting.