As a little girl living in a little cul de sac, I always wanted to exceed the boundary of the mailboxes at the top of the street. Thinking no one was looking, the neighbor girls and I would race to the stop sign only to hear the dreadful phrase, "What do you think you girls are doing?" Coming from our ancient neighbor, Fritz.
Since my family and I lived in the same house my mom had been raised in, our older neighbors knew her almost as their own. Fritz and Jackie had been around the longest, and their daughter Donna was my Auntie Sam's best friend. When I was six-years-old, Donna got very sick. Two years later, before she had even turned 40, Donna died on an flight to Texas where everyone had hoped she would be able to recover.
I was always afraid of Fritz. He made me eat extra vegetables and never let me get away with a white lie. Fritz is my Boo Radley. I never understood why he used his scornful voice on us until he lost his daughter. Looking from a different perspective, I realized that Fritz was a good guy. He might have seemed rough on the outside, but he loved us kids. I now know that all the times he got us in trouble was for our own benefit, he just never wanted to see us get hurt.
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