They grew up on me.

I made this post in 2010:  https://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2010/11/something-pretty-neat-happened-to-me.html  It's a fairly short read.

The girl in it was  three at the time and afterwards for years she always had a hug for me. She was 'My Sweetie' and every time I saw the little girl her in the yard she'd light up and I'd wander over for a big hug.

About two or three years ago when I wandered into the neighborhood swimming pool area looking for someone she spotted me and charged over soaking wet and gave me a big hug. I was flattered to no end. What old man gets hugs from 13 year old girls?

Her brother, five years older at about the age of ten would occasionally watch Kitty when I went somewhere for a day or two. By the time he was twelve he had complete charge of the Piccolo manse when I was gone to sea for three weeks at a time.  

I think he was twelve when Kitty got sick and he never bothered to tell me about it until I got home. That was because he took care of it. Somehow he had gotten a vet to make a house call and treated Kitty which I kind of found and still find rather astonishing. 

Later I found out the vet was a family connection and when I chased him down to compensate him we settled for a bottle of Dewar's.

Over time his responsibilities increased and when I'd come home from sea I generally came home to a recently mowed lawn and always to a happy Kitty. 

Seeing he was now living with three women I'd sometimes have him over for 'guy food' and whip us some ribs or my world famous chili-like substance. We still do that when he's in the area. Currently he's at Embry-Riddle as a junior and always seems to find some time to drop in on me when he's home. As an old man I'm flattered that a college kid would drop in on me.

He helped me move a couch a while back and while we were tooling along I told him about the time I was put up for the Legion of Honor by the Foreign Legion for shooting 38 A-rabs off he back of a camel.

"Let's see," he replied. The average camel can hold 500 pounds divided by 30 equals an average weight of each A-rab of 13.15789473 pounds.

What do you expect from an Embry-Riddle Aerospace engineering major? 

He's already got a job lined up and when he graduates and heads off to work out of state I am really going to miss him.

There's a middle daughter in the family and for some reason or another I never did connect well with her. I attribute that probably to timing. She considers me as a family friend. She's a pretty good kid and is doing well at a college not too far away.

Back to my sweetie who is now sixteen.

Her brother was doing some work for me a couple months ago and grabbed her to help with some cleanup. Over our lunch break I got to talk to her for the first time in a long while and I was astonished at how she'd turned into a confident young woman.

She's what I would have referred to back in the day as a 'cool chick' and I really enjoyed talking with her. I was tempted to invite her over for lunch but I suppose it's not cool for an old man to invite a teenaged girl over.

I hope when the weather breaks I can meet her walking up the street and chat with her in the safety of the driveway or maybe someplace in public.

It's a wonderful experience getting to chat with a youngster I have known since she was a three year-old.

Her parents should be proud of the job they did on her.

Actually they did pretty damned good on all three of them.

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I have another project coming up about someone else I got to watch growing up that's just entered the medical field. 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY