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Flashback: Way Back! Me at 19

Molly — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:58:55 +0000

Here’s a photo of me at 19 years of age, close to three decades ago! I’m inside one of the smaller Toltec pyramids at Teotihuacan, Mexico.

The photo was taken by my friend long passed, Jack Schwanke.

This of course was not digital, just taken with a cheap camera, commercially processed, put in a box for 10 years and scanned at some point.

Flashback Post: Web Design and Development Personality Indicators

Molly — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:37:18 +0000

From 2005, for your amusement.

(original post here: Web Design and Development personality indicators)

-=-

I’VE HAD ENOUGH! Frustrated with the range of attitudes and opinions I deal with as a standards-oriented educator, I’ve decided to begin a project (very) loosely based on the Meyers-Briggs personality indicators. So, dear readers, I’m hoping you’ll help me add and refine my categories, but I’m off to a start with the following:

OFAD. Old Fart Anti-Design. These are the guys (and I mean guys) that were on the Web as early as 1991. Almost all physicists at major research institutions, they’re the ones who helped Tim Berners-Lee refine the Web and were the first adopters. Mostly long in the tooth now, some are still kicking and they can be described as the anti-designers. These aren’t even purists – today’s approaches seem foreign and sometimes frightening to them. They long for the days of Lynx, really, but barring glowing text on a terminal and HTML authored in Vi or Emacs, their idea of Web design is default gray backgrounds, default text, maybe a list, and the apex of old fart visual design: a horizontal rule. Fortunately, this is a very rare breed and usually they can be ignored because unless they’ve progressed somewhat, they have precious little to offer the contemporary, standards-oriented Web designer or developer.
OSVD. Old Skool Visual Designer. These are the folks that refuse to see beyond their nested-tables-spacer-GIF design. In fact, you can find them at a variety of ad agencies and teaching at conferences all over the world, still excited when they create a design in Photoshop and use the so-called HTML export utility. These designers are often extremely hostile toward standardistas largely because the idea of change or looking at code is so traumatic that they hold on to the Old Skool methodology as if it were a lifeboat on a stormy sea. Unfortunately, this breed isn’t rare enough.
TTLM. Trying To Learn More. In this category are the good men and women who might still be serving it up Old Skool but are open to learning, open to growth yet struggling with standards related concepts and the snakepit of browser challenges of contemporary Web design and development. These brave souls are not in the majority, but they are to be lauded and assisted for their willingness to venture forth and expand their horizons.
SAVD. Standards Aware Visual Designer. These people are designing with standards in mind – creating beautiful sites for the screen, working toward achieving accessible sites, examining usability and human factors, and very possibly beginning or already designing for alternative devices and media types. A very rare breed, and if you are reading this post it’s very highly likely you’re either one your own fine self, know all their names or have Zeldman’s personal phone number memorized.
SASS. Standards Aware Structural Semanticist. These personalities are very code-centric, with little interest (or more often, skill) in presentation but lots of interest in the proper structuring of documents, use of meaningful markup, microformats, Semantic Web and the like. At their most compulsive, they can become purists to the point of having unrealistic expectations of the more worldly Web worker. Also a rare breed, SASS personalities are extremely important to the good of the Web but sometimes need to be reminded that smart structure and semantics can happily co-exist with visual design.
SACE. Standards Aware Cutting Edge. Whether visual designers or code-centric or both, these are the folks that design first for Firefox, Safari and Opera and work around IE 6.0 only because they have to. Given their druthers, sites would be built using practically no markup and lots of attribute selectors, just because they like the idea. A rare breed worth watching, but also in need of reminders that the rest of the world just ain’t there yet, and in fact, really are lagging behind.

Hybrids are not unusual, either. I sort of live between the SASS and the SAVD personalities, with not enough real design skill to execute great visual designs, but enough savvy to appreciate beautiful, standards-based Web sites. There’s probably a personality type for people like me, but it’s very difficult to assess my own character, so I’ll leave it there for now.

As I’m typing this, I’m on a ship in the Eastern Caribbean teaching CSS on a Geek Cruise. The ship, the MS Zuiderdam, is just in the process of docking at Road Town, Tortola, in the British Virgin Isles. I’m sure you all feel really sorry for me right now.

It’s just past dawn and I’m up at the very top of the ship where there happens to be WiFi at the going rate of 40 cents USD per minute, so you’ll forgive me if I leave you now with the following questions: Are you one of these personality types, and if so, which? Do you have a personality type you’d like to add to my little list?

Andy Warhol Had it Wrong

Molly — Tue, 27 May 2008 05:32:29 +0000

Fifteen minutes of fame was a good guess, but had Mr. Warhol known about blogging, I think that measurement would have been far greater.

Flashback: 2001. How Specialization Limited the Web

Molly — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:06:08 +0000

Every so often I like to re-publish old articles and work just for laughs, or a sobering reality check. Digging around through some archives recently, I came across this article from Web Techniques. It was written over six years ago and I believe it remains true (except for some of the technology terms and references) to this day.

How Specialization Limited the Web

When the Web was new, skill integration was the only way you could survive as a designer. The trend toward specialization has been a tough transition for those of us who successfully handled many skills in the early days. Many of us have scrambled to decide on a specialty, only to find that it isn’t necessarily a good fit.

If you’re one of those people who truly loves the Web and all of its component parts, do you have to choose one area of focus? Maybe not. Sure, there’s a lot more to building a Web page than one person can handle. But lately—perhaps because of the market downturn—there’s a trend toward skill integration again.

Reminiscing

The Web recently turned ten years old. That’s made me think a lot about where we, as Web designers and developers, have been and where we’re going. In the midst of my musings, I looked at some old writing I’d done about Web design. I revisited my very first book, Professional Web Design: Theory and Technique on the Cutting Edge. Destined for rapid obscurity by the time it was published, the book contains at least one really cool historical point: In it, I proposed that Web design would soon shift from a one-man-band scenario to an orchestral model.

It cracks me up silly to think that the one-man-band designer model was not only possible, but actually prevalent back then. Even that early on, it was becoming clear that the Web was going to demand an awful lot of its designers and developers—asking that we learn new technologies, as well as new ways of thinking and working. Balancing a range of skills became increasingly important to a Web designer’s success.

It was evident that skill integration would become crucial as early as 1993, when the Mosaic browser provided a visual glimpse at the Web’s wiry undergrowth. But even then, it took a few years for Web development to take a more structured professional shape. Mostly, we were experimenting—attempting to combine HTML, graphics, and eventually scripts to make sites do cool things. By 1995, the need for a professional approach to creating Web sites became evident.

Web professionals in 1995 came from a wide range of backgrounds: programmers, artists, media specialists in TV, radio, and advertising, business people, writers, and many enthusiasts. We came to the field with a lot of energy and brought experience from these other realms. Web design excited us because it was a new frontier that was challenging, full of attitude, and just plain fun.

The simple act of combining HTML with a graphic is in many ways the first time a Web designer integrates techniques. Writing HTML successfully—even in its early days—required some studying if you wanted to move beyond the hobbyist level into a more professional sphere. Creating a graphic that looked good and was well optimized for the much slower mid-’90s Web also meant brushing up on a few skills. There were comparatively few books and resources. In fact, 1995 was a hallmark year for the appearance of just those things—it was the year in which WebReview.com was born and Web Techniques was being incubated.

Integration part one

Those of us in the field at that time worked hard to learn what we could of HTML. We tried different ways to create graphics. And, as I’ve pointed out in past columns, the simplistic nature of HTML and graphics at that time pushed certain people to create really innovative designs that relied on simplicity. It’s a well-worn point that limitations often spur innovation, and the early days of the Web proved it.

Soon thereafter, scripting and style came onto the client-side scene. Designers were suddenly writing scripts, and programmers started thinking about presentation. This integration was a difficult process. For the most part, the elements on the resulting sites weren’t truly integrated, and they often lacked something. Maybe a site worked great, but it looked bad. Or maybe it looked great, but crashed browsers. Either way, skill integration demands were upon us. We worked hard to get our chops up in as many areas as we could to give our sites a professional look and solid performance.

Meanwhile, the visual Web was becoming integrated with server-side technologies. This meant increasingly dynamic sites, and monumental changes for site builders. ASP, ColdFusion, and other emerging applications became intertwined with databases—all with the specific goal of delivering cool stuff to the page intelligently. Add to that network administration and security concerns; it’s no wonder that specialized technologies began to take over. After several years of working to integrate our skills, professional Web designers and developers began to realize that specialization might be a better career move.

Fragmentation

Skill integration worked well until the skills necessary to build a professional Web page multiplied beyond the juggling point. Over the past few years, many maturing Web developers set aside integrated techniques and looked more closely at various specialties. You could focus on the client-side, becoming a great HTML author, content specialist, JavaScript and DHTML guru, or innovative designer. On the server-side, countless languages and development opportunities arose. You could focus on application languages like Java, database technologies for the Web, or a range of other applications. Some of us moved away from the skill integration that had defined our jobs to that point, and sought new career identities through specialization. However, many of us are still struggling with this process.

It’s especially hard for those of us who successfully integrated our skills in the early days to pinpoint what we want to specialize in. Just because you like visual design doesn’t mean that programming isn’t a passion, too. As a result, employers often push us toward the specialty that best satisfies a corporate need. Of course, employers’ needs don’t necessarily reflect our own passions. On a personal level, many designers feel that specialization has dimmed some of the joy and sense of accomplishment they once felt.

Specialization

On a larger scale, has fragmentation assisted or encumbered us? Is such deep specialization good for the industry and the people who propel the Web? I argue that it’s not. Let’s use the medical field as an example: If you’re going for medical care, at least in the U.S., you’re likely to first consult a primary care physician. After that, you’re shuttled off to the specialist. He or she then hones in on the specific problem.

The fatal flaw with this method is that the specialist doesn’t know you, or doesn’t have the full experience of your strengths and weaknesses. In effect, the specialist can provide a solution to a particular problem, but that solution may not be a perfect fit for your overall situation. In medicine, a lot of unfortunate mistakes occur precisely because a specialist is looking at the problem and not the person.

Web design and development face the same risks. It’s become increasingly clear that no one person can do all of this stuff. However, if we forget to look at the project as a whole, the health of Web design and development will suffer.

Integration part two

Here enters the project manager, who oversees specialty integration. While I’m seeing more literature about Web project management, the field is still emerging. A project manager needs considerable breadth of industry knowledge, some depth of knowledge, and most certainly communication skills that will link the now fragmented Web development departments.

To put it simply, we still need integration. But now, instead of integrating our own skills, we’re integrating those of a combined team. Web design and development specialists flounder without someone to successfully orchestrate a given project.

Unfortunately, integration is becoming harder, primarily because of the explosive interest in Wireless and alternative device design. These devices add an entirely new layer of rich, but complex technology, and their design needs are often distinctly different than what we’ve learned to do for the Web. Consider this technical specifications listing for a senior Web designer:

Requirements:

HTML, JavaScript, and other programming languages;
Flash, Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, Quark, Dreamweaver, Director, After Effects, Television/Broadcast graphic packages;
2D and 3D interface design;
Audio editing.

Integrated skills indeed! And how about this more developer-oriented listing?

Requirements:

BA in computer science or equivalent experience.
Two-plus years development in ASP, ADO, OLEDB, Windows DNA Architecture (DCOM/COM+).
Six-plus months development using MS SQL Stored Procedures.
Two-plus years of Visual Basic 6.
HTML and Web site architecture.
Strong knowledge of ADO/MS SQL connectivity.
History implementing HTML, ASP scripting, VBScript and JavaScript applications.
Experience with Dynamic HTML (DHTML), XML, SSL, SSH, style sheets.
Knowledge of Network Teaming through DCOM.
Strong background in Windows NT/IIS administration.
Strong communication skills and teamwork experience.
Ability to interface with business customers to aid collaboration.
Willingness to work within and contribute to a team-oriented environment.
Highly motivated, with a desire to “hit the ground running.”

Pluses:

MCSE/MCP/MCSD (+Internet);
Microsoft Transaction Server;
SQL, Transact-SQL, PL/SQL, SQL+;
CGI programming (in both Perl and C).

Sobering, isn’t it? Only a few years after specialization took over, we seem to be at another crossroads. In the aftershocks of our industry shakeup, how will the demands of integration and specialization influence our projects and the way we work over time? It really boils down to three choices: We can work on a self-selected series of technologies and integrate them into our skill sets, decide to specialize on one specific topic, or let our employers’ needs guide us.

Striking a balance

I think the complexity of these job listings clearly demonstrates the quandary we’re in. While we’ve come a long way, it’s most definitely time to take a careful look at what we’re doing with our careers. Okay, so you don’t have to wax as philosophical as I do. Still, you can decide exactly what kind of developer or designer to be.

Looking at our past sheds some light not only on how we can work more effectively today—but also on how we might prepare for tomorrow’s unknowns. We’re at a defining moment in our industry, one that has been ushered in with some unfortunate doom and gloom. In recent months, many of us, or our colleagues have lost or changed jobs, and the entire industry has been experiencing a profound shift.

As Web Techniques readers know, this shift—while unpleasant—is also a necessity. Look at it as a correction if you will, similar to what the stock market does every so often. And while countless people have lost jobs, there’s little doubt in my mind that those people who are serious about long-term careers with Web and related technologies will land on their feet.

Despite the fragmentation of our industry, the Web designers and developers who will be most empowered, most able to find good jobs and contracts, and most able to adapt to our industry’s rapid change are the ones with integrated, diverse skills. Even if you’re specializing, you still need the integration!

September, 2001.
By Molly E. Holzschlag. (Link to original article.)

Of Old Recordings

Molly — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:08:17 +0000

GOING THROUGH OLD RECORDINGS today I stumbled across some of the studio work I’ve done. I’ve never shared these because I just now pulled them together, but I hope you’ll enjoy them. Regular readers and old friends know I had a bit of a music career at one time as a singer, songwriter, guitarist and vocalist. I had some dumb fortune: amazing talent perform my songs with me – ah, Tucson – legendary musical talent but shitty venues. You’ll hear some great playing here that makes me sound lots better than I might have really been.

You can download the tunes (MP3 format, all for broadband) at your leisure from the directory page or one at a time here. This first batch came from a locally distributed album I did back in 1990 called Mysteries Involving Circles and Rings.

Terra Cotta Slumber. One of my earliest songs written for guitar, composed somewhere around 1980. Recorded here in 1990 with the phenomenal guitarist Ed DeLucia featured playing acoustic lead.
Lost Heroes. The line about George Bush makes me shiver considering I wrote it about George I. Beautiful lead guitar work once again from Ed.
Postcard from Haiti. Something for you folks who want a little more rock in your political roll.

Here are a few other things I found:

Life as a River. Recorded at Crash Landing Studios with Courage Sisters. Me, Patty Sundberg, Don Reeve (another phenomenal guitarist – listen for the soaring electric leads in this one), and fantabulous Marx Loeb on drums.
This Heart. A one-off recorded with my amazing friend Mark who walked into the studio and we got these harmonies down in one take. An uplifting love song with more guitar from Ed DeLucia (sound quality unfortunately not so good, but Mark’s vocals are worth it).
Wrapped in Gray. Just me: lead and harmony vocals, guitar. A song contrasting my life with the death of my father. Annoyingly long, but the lyrics are cinematic.

I have more. Let me know what you think.

Andy Warhol Stepped On Me

Molly — Mon, 30 May 2005 11:19:01 +0000

THIS POST IS ABOUT FAME. How we brush up against it, how it brushes up against us, and how it can knock us over, step on us, and even trash our house.

Bloodlines

Before I write about some of my interactions with well-known people, I think it’s interesting to look within my own family, where a mix of good and dubious fame exists.

The good fame blood relation is Franz Kafka. His mother was sister to my great grandmother. If you look at pictures of him, and then meet my brother Morris and my mom, you’ll find the family resemblance is downright uncanny. My brother Linus has a picture of Morris somewhere that looks exactly like this one of Franz.

The dubious fame comes from my father’s side of the family, where several of his brothers had deep ties to organized crime. Milton Holt, my uncle (not the Hawaii senator, who was also a crook), was indicted many times on racketeering charges and is said to have been one of Jimmy Hoffa’s right-hand men via their activities in the Teamsters Union.

My own father’s history within the organization remains unclear, even if he were alive I doubt he’d talk about it, but the chances he was fairly involved are high. It’s possible my brother Linus knows more about it than I do, and if he happens to come by the blog, maybe he’ll say a word or two about that.

Interestingly, Uncle Milty’s wife Toni had a career as a Hollywood actress and even has a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

Me n’ Howard

Howard Thies was my best friend in high school. We were both rebellious misfit types, very bright and creative. Howard had the most amazing green eyes and long, thick blonde hair which made us a very outrageous looking duo with our wild hair and hippie clothes. We were always making mischief somewhere and giving anyone perceived as authority lots of grief.

Howard’s mom was an artist from Germany who ran an art gallery on the edges of Greenwich Village in New York City – more near The Bowery, really. Howard and I would often cut school, take the train out of New Jersey where we lived and go to Washington Square Park. There, we’d hang out drinking cheap beer, getting stoned, and generally being teenage slackers.

Hey, it was the 70s.

When we did go to school Howard and I both did theater work. I started out with an interest in acting and singing and then got pulled into the technical side of theater when I found I had a lot more in common with the geeks running light boards and sound than the thespians. It was the first outward sign of my moving away from being a creatively focused person to a technically focused one. I kept working in technical theater well into college, but eventually moved on to other things. Howard, however, focused himself brilliantly within the field and is now an award-winning stage lighting designer in New York.

We’d go to lots of shows. I was exposed to some of the most influential music of my life via Howard and some other friends within our crew. We’d do anything to sneak into shows at the infamous CBGBs and The Palladium, where we witnessed first-hand the emergence of punk and 80s rock – Patti Smith, The Ramones, Mink DeVille, Dead Kennedys with Jello Biafra, and the list goes on.

With Howard as my partner in adventure naturally some majorly interesting brushes with fame came through my experiences with him. First up, actress Karen Allen, right after Animal House came out. We were hanging in Washington Square Park on the fountain when she came bouncing through the park, flashing us a smile so full of light and joy and friendliness that an easily-impressed 16-year old Howard couldn’t shut up about it for months. We waved at her and she waved back, and then some kid came swooshing up on a skateboard for her autograph. She gave such an aura of being at ease with her surroundings. I remain inspired by her natural way of being.

Andy Warhol Stepped On Me

One night, Howard got hold of tickets to the “Bring Abbie Home” rally at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum.

Now, many readers here won’t even know who Abbie Hoffman is, so I hope you’ll read more about him if you don’t. In a very small nutshell, he was a radical social advocate and political activist in the 60s and 70s, and author of “Steal This Book.”

The rally is infamous, largely because rumors abound that Hoffman showed up at the party, which was a call to political leaders to drop the drug charges that had kept him a fugitive from the law for many years.

Many prominent representatives from Beat and Hippie culture were at this event, with a healthy smattering of early Punks.

Howard was leading the way toward our seats when I got caught in a group of people. Some pushing and shoving landed a couple of us right on our asses. So there I was, on the floor trying to get my bearings when all of a sudden a very dramatic man in a cape steps over me and misses clearing my poor teenaged self, clipping my finger with his shoe. He never looked down, not once. He was immediately followed by about three other wildly dressed people, each who stepped over me as if I wasn’t even there. It was a maddening moment, and then suddenly it dawned on me: I’d just been stepped on by Andy Warhol.

Fortunately Howard found me and got me on my feet. Within minutes we got to our seats up front where, I kid you not dear readers, there was Allen Ginsberg holding forth. I was introduced to him, and he was extremely gracious to me, a refreshing salve for my pained hand and Warhol-bruised ego.

My Trashed House

Sometime in 1980 I ventured out of the east coast and came to Tucson, where my grandmother was in very poor health. I lived at her place until she died, after which I had her house for a few years before it was sold.

What my mother was thinking when she let a 17 year old crazy child have an entire house to herself I don’t know, but you can imagine that it quickly became the party house. One summer, I went back east to visit my mom and my brothers, and when I got back to the house, I was absolutely shocked.

Mattresses had been pulled off of beds, there were cooking pots on the floor encrusted with pasta remnants, empty bottles of beer, wine, and hard liquor piled up or broken all over the kitchen, someone had spilled dog food for the dogs in a corner, and god knows who was feeding the cats, despite that I’d left some of my more responsible friends in charge (or so I had thought). This is the desert during the summer, mind, so the place was blistering hot with the cooler going full blast and every window in the house open. Not a soul in sight.

My friends eventually showed up and explained just what the hell happened in that house: The J. Geils Band had been in town doing a show, and somehow they ended up at my place for the weekend for one hell of a crazy party.

And I wasn’t even there. But hey, my house got trashed by the J. Geils Band. If you think Love Stinks, you ought to have smelled the place after they visited for a weekend.

. . . and Others Along the Way

Other brushes with fame are less dramatic but certainly noteworthy. I got to meet Penn & Teller. Teller’s much nicer, but Penn is one hell of an exceptionally bright human. Also, the fabulously funny John Pinette who was a gentleman and a charmer in person and the sexiest fat man on the planet (hell, he makes me laugh, that’s always sexy).

One time I came out of my hotel in San Francisco and chatted on the street about how shitty a city it is to try and hail a cab in with Nicole Kidman who was completely lovely. Later that same night I went for dinner in a local sushi bar. My attention kept being drawn to this rattily dressed guy at the end of the bar who was talking to some slick LA type. I kept thinking “God, who is that?” and finally I realized that no, it wasn’t a slacker friend from Tucson, but the unparalleled Sean Penn. It turns out both Kidman and Penn were in town doing a stage production.

Brushing Up

So, those are my memorable brushes with fame. How about you? Who have you met, run into, been run into by, been stepped on or otherwise met or are related to in some way?

Finding the Missing Pieces

Molly — Sun, 22 May 2005 17:16:28 +0000

SOMETIMES I FIND MISSING PIECES OF MYSELF. Some readers here know I once was a serious musician and performer. I haven’t been following that muse lately, though. She still calls, but I’ve been ignoring her, for whatever reason(s).

Sometimes, visiting the past can help us find a missing piece. Today, I’m thinking of a concert I did with Patty Sundberg in our nearly ten-year duo, “Courage Sisters.” (Wow, check out that page for a real flashback, yikes!)

We performed at the Southside Presbyterian Church, home of the Reverend John Fife.

Reverend Fife is a revered humanitarian and immigration rights advocate here in the Southwestern United States:

“My understanding of the church’s role in a community like this and my understanding of the faith is very clear. You look at where the most oppressed and poorest people are suffering, and you try to relieve those — that suffering and those problems.”

The good Reverend heard Patty and I sing at a wedding held in the Kiva chapel, and invited us to hold a concert there. We loved the idea. We also decided that all proceeds beyond cost would go to charity.

So we played inside the Church’s magnificent Kiva, which is built upon American Indian tribal custom. It’s a round building, made of natural wood, stone, and adobe, all gathered from here in the Sonoran desert.

The acoustics are phenomenal.

So, here’s a song recorded live and in the round from that very special night. The song is called “Love’s Immortal Fountain.” Patty Sundberg is singing the beautiful harmonies, and we have Phil Stevens (honorary sistah) on viola. I wrote and arranged the song, and I’m doing the finger-picking on an electric acoustic Takamine as well as singing the lead vocals.

Love’s Immortal Fountain (MP3 format)

I hope you enjoy! And I hope you will share some good things you thought once lost but now again found in your life.

Holy Flashback Batman!

Molly — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 21:19:08 +0000

HOLY FLASHBACK BATMAN! Name at least two people in this photo if you can.

First two correct posted answers win a Zen of CSS Design book, and second two get a Spring Into HTML and CSS book.

pop culture moment

Molly — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 01:44:10 +0000

OH YOU’RE INCREDIBLE, and I’m getting lost in movies and TV shows.

God bless torrents.

The Incredibles

For the first half I was blown away into sublime happiness. I lost it toward the end in which I think the “Disney” administration displayed its ugly influence.

21 Grams

I watched it again only because I wanted to revisit the career of Melissa Leo who is hot in this film, not to mention brilliant in her years on Homicide, Life on the Streets (see next) and for whom I profess an unrequited love.

Homicide: Life on the Street

Homicide broke all the rules: Hand-held cameras, real characters with complex lives. The show went on to influence and inspire a host of contemporary cop and suspense shows: Law and Order, Oz, you name it – nothing was like the first two years of this show in terms of gritty commercial US TV.

Memorable, get it, watch it.

the be my best friend story

Molly — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:56:27 +0000

BE MY BEST friend, she asked. We were six years old. Odd how early experiences can embed themselves into our personalities so deeply.

The Be My Best Friend Story

When I was a little girl at summer camp, another little girl came up to me and wanted to play. “Be my best friend?” she asked, and held out her hand. So Annie and I shook on it and we became best friends.

A few weeks later, a group of kids were playing outside, and I was walking up from behind because I’d gone to get a chocolate milk for Annie. Annie loved chocolate milk!

As I neared the group, I heard Annie ask another girl “Be my best friend?” And the other girl replied “I thought you were Molly’s best friend!”

Annie said “Yeah, but today I think she’s a dumb girl because she didn’t bring me chocolate milk so I want a new best friend.”

Well, there’s little six year old me, swearing I wouldn’t cry or yell at Annie, whom I believed to be my best friend.

So I ran away to the stream, throwing out the chocolate milk along the way. When I got there, a group of boys were killing tadpoles. I had a screaming fit at them to make them stop and then ran to a favorite tree and cried my eyes out ’til long past dark.