Interesting...

EDIT: My grandma and a friend pointed out the logic in her thinking... I feel a little over-reacting, now. And for good reason, as this post shows.

Riddle me this...

I was babysitting a neighbor's baby the other day. Their house is directly behind us, but we can no longer reach their yard because they put up a privacy fence before moving in. This means that to reach their house (or the whole bottom of the hill), we have to either cut through the underbrush of the vacant lot or walk along the sidewalk a quarter mile.


Fifteen minutes before I was to babysit, the neightbor called and asked if I needed a ride to her house. I had to stop for a minute and think: Isn't this our backdoor neighbor? That's who I'm babysitting for, right? Why would I need a ride?


It turns out that she just noticed that the underbrush was covered by tree debris. (The men who chopped down the trees for the privacy fence just left the branches all over the vacant lot-- and this was a year ago.)


"No," I said, still confused, "I'm fine; I'll walk."


She came back around eight o'clock. The sun was painting the sky but it was not really dark yet. Just dim.


As I was gathering my bag and shoes, she said, "I'll drive you back home, okay?"


Again, I was surprised. "I'm fine; it's just a quarter mile. I can use the exercise, anyway!"


"No, I'm really not comfortable with you walking." She waved her hand at the window, where everything was still perfectly visible in the light of the setting sun. "It worries me."


Er... "O-okay."


The road from her house to ours is mildly busy; a car drives by every fifteen minutes or so (yes, that is mildly busy). And it was still bright out. My siblings and I have played frisbee with the neighbor kids in the street-- at twilight! Oh, well. If she wanted to drive me, so be it.


As we walked out to the garage, she asked me if I was allowed to sit in the front.


This floored me the most. I'm old enough to drive... I think I'm allowed to sit in the front seat! And I do not look four years younger than I am... Some peoples' minds escape me. :P