Cassie Wallender // Firewallender

Tonight I spent some time with Karlee, my Little Sister through Big Brothers Big Sisters. I thought I’d share some cute moments from our evening together:

In the car together, we drove over a hill in Wallingford and caught sight of a beautiful downtown Seattle at twilight.

“Do you know what ‘twilight’ means, Karlee?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a movie. Oh! And a book,” she replied.

“Did you know it’s also the time of day between the sun being up and being down, like right now?”

“Nope!”

I asked her what was new. “Well, Hannah Montana is moving back to her hometown, and the Jonas brothers are over.”

“Why are they over?” I asked.

“Because Kevin got married.”

“Why does that mean it’s over?”

“I don’t know. It just is.” She paused. “Hannah Montana is moving, the Jonas brothers are over, and that’s really all I know about what’s new in the world.”

We decided to make pizza and have root beer. On the way to the store for root beer we enjoyed the fact that saying something over and over again makes it sound ridiculous. By the time we got to the store, it had been settled that we were playing a game where once in the store, we could only communicate by saying “root beer”. This was all pretty harmless until we got to the checkout line.

“How are you this afternoon?”
“Root beer.” Karlee greeted him.
“Sorry?” The poor clerk looked confused.
“Root beer!”
He smiled politely, scanned our root beer purchase, and turned to me. “Do you have a Safeway card this evening, ma’m?”
I smiled back, nodded, and replied, “Root beer.”
At that point it all clicked and he chuckled to himself, then actually started playing along with us. It was hilarious. After our transaction we bid him “Root beer!” and he waved and wished us farewell with “Root beer!” in return.

She cracks me up. Karlee and I have been pals since she was seven and I’m so glad we are friends.

It’s a great feeling getting to teach her things… tonight I taught her more about how to sew as we’re working on a dress together, I taught her that “twilight” is not just a movie about vampires, and that there’s an older version of “Alice in Wonderland” that Disney made as a cartoon, what a right angle is and the difference between squared and cubic measurements, how to draw a 3D box, and what a “flanking bonus” is. She probably didn’t need that last one, but hey… when a kid asks you what your shirt means, you can’t just say “because”.