The earthy
aroma of Kentucky woods and the feeling of freedom that comes with adventure were
all too familiar with my seven year old self. That little town of about 1,000
was not only the birthplace of my creativity, but also where I met my first
best friend. She lived just down the
street, we went to the same church and school, and we liked all the same
activities, so we did everything together. Our all time favorite thing to do
was exploring the woods during the hot summer months. We’d climb stiff vines
and swing on them across the streams and creeks while pretending we were saving
baby tigers in the rainforest. Our imaginations could run wild in those woods.
One day my first grade teacher asked us to
write a creative story using our vocabulary words like adventure, explore, and
dangerous. Naturally I wanted to write about Melanie and me, so I called it “The
Adventures of Lizzy and Mel Mel”. We lived in a treehouse in the middle of the
Amazon Rainforest with our sisters. In the story we rode zip lines everywhere,
even to church and Wal-Mart. We saved baby tigers and tended to injured toucans
with the help of our dog and cat, Ellie Mae and Boots. My first story was about
ten pages long, but I still had plenty to write about. Every time my teacher
gave us a writing assignment, I would write about Lizzy and Mel Mel. I loved
putting all my creativity into those stories, and to make my imagination come
to life even more, I drew a map of our little town in the Amazon on six pieces
of paper taped together to not leave out a single zip line or swinging
vine. Rolled up like a scroll, the map came with me on trips so I could plan
out Lizzy and Mel Mel’s next adventures.
The
longest trip the map and my stories went on was on the move to Tennessee that
summer. Melanie and I kept in touch and I continued to write about us and all
the fun we could be having together. Her family came to visit us a year after
we had moved. I was so excited to see my best friend again and could not wait for
all the fun activities we would do together. But when I saw her, she no longer
had that spark of mischief and adventure in her eye. All she wanted to talk
about was boys, clothes, and shopping, and those were all the things I hated. I
could not believe that my best friend, that I used to do everything with and
like all the same stuff, had changed so much. I no longer had the desire to
write about Lizzy and Mel Mel because Melanie and Mel Mel were not the same
person anymore. I rolled up the scroll and the stories and hid them in a shoebox
under my bed. I then focused my creativeness into drawing, piano, and singing. But
every once and a while, I find myself on the floor with a shoebox lid in my
hand and my eyes scanning over the misspelled words of a seven year old who
longed to share adventure with a best friend.
