Once a big sister, always a big sister

Last week heading through Mississippi on 1-55, we stopped in the small town of Batesville en route to the campground. Laurie went into the grocery store to pick up supplies while I took Marley for a short walk. As I passed by boarded-up store after boarded-up store, feeling the tremendous sadness of the place, a diminutive
14 year old white girl with braces, wearing tight jeans and a worn and faded pink t-shirt, jumped up from her front porch and waved at me from across the street. She wanted to ask if Marley was a German Shepherd. We chatted for 15 minutes or so as she half- twirled on one foot and shyly looked up at me, sometimes daring to grin. She told me about all the stray dogs in town that she and her mother try to feed. She seemed hungry for company and full of bright curiosity. I wanted to take her under my wing!

I later found myself  thinking about looking into the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston; feeling something is drawing me to helping girls like this.

Then today at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, a young African American teenager tapped me on the shoulder while I was looking at TinaTurner's gold sequin dress and asked me if I'd help her with a school assignment. The girl carried a large spiral notebook with well-thumbed pages filled with neat notations in 4 color ball-point pens — a girl after my own heart. She told me she was feeling totally overwhelmed by all the exhibits she'd seen and had no idea how to approach her paper, which was to address  the role of religion in music, the cultural roots of African American music, and the obligations of the music industry in community, especially during the Civil Rights era. I sat down with her, and as BB King played on the sound system around us, made some recommendations about how to touch on those factors in a few specific ways that interested her, rather than trying to sum up everything she was learning at the museum. That, we agreed, would be way too much information for any single paper and no fun for her to write or the teacher to read. We spent about an hour together wandering around the museum and talking about how she might shape her paper. At the end, I told her I thought she’d do really well with her paper. She seemed genuinely enthused and grateful for my thoughts. For my part, I walked away feeling completely "jazzed" by the experience and amazed that she had the guts to ask a total stranger for help!

Who knows what will happen next!