When I was about 7 or 8 years old and my sister Molly was 4 or 5 we lived in a small town in Florida called Newberry. We lived in a small neighborhood with block homes, and our particular area had two streets that ran alongside each other, both streets had deadends, and our house was in the middle of our street, but on the furthers of the two streets around a curve.
My mom worked in Gainesville at the time and my dad worked in town, you could walk or ride your bike to his shop-though he drove a van to work daily. Our babysitter, lived at the end of her street which was the other street before ours that ran parallel to ours. Most of the days, we would be excited to go home or perhaps our parents didn't want to go to the babysitter's house-so we would walk down the street that the babysitter lived on, around the corner, and down our street to our house. As neighborhoods go, the houses were close together and you could actually look to the left as you were walking home and see the back yards of the people that lived in our street & you could actually see our house too.
Even as a child, I tried to respect other people's property and didn't just go walking through their yards to get to our house-I walked the road and tried not to get in any trouble or be in the way.
One particular day, a guy in a truck drove past us and down to the end of the street and went around the cul-de-sac (right in front of the sitter's house) and back down the road to get out of the neighborhood. At the time he came back, we were about 1/2 way down the street. If you were to look left, you could literally see our house. He stopped and opened his door as we walked up. He said to me and my sister that my dad had asked him to pick us up and bring us home. I just looked at him, because I was confused to why my dad would send someone to pick us up that we 1. didn't know and 2. we literally could see our house-we were not that far away, just around the corner. So he repeated himself, but in a more angry voice.
At this point, my sister Molly starts climbing up on the guy, holding on to his open door to get in. I pull her back down and say in her ear "you can't go with him, he could be a kidnapper..."
At the same time, this is happening, the babysitter's teen daughter is running down the street screaming because she had noticed him drive down and around the curve in front of her house and was watching to see if he was living in the area. Molly yells...no...and starts to slam the door as he speeds off....never to be seen again!
And that is why I am the best sister in the entire world!
xoxo, Lela
photo for reference (and yes this is the exact area-but many many years later)
