How I met Cristin

I'm a very shy person. I've never really liked big groups of people, and I've been trying to work on both of those problems for as long as I can remember. In 3rd grade I had one friend. I guess I never really thought I needed more than that. I would spend a lot of time at home because when you only have one friend, you only go to see them so often.

My brother, of course, always has been very social. One day he came home and said that a girl moved in across the street and that I should go knock and say hi. The odds of that were pretty much non-existant. My brother went over and talked to the woman who lived there another day and said that he was going to bring over his sister, because she was about the same age.

Since I'm such a shy person, the chances of getting me to volunteer to partake in this was not likely, and not easy. After a lot of coaching and some demanding, my brother realized that it was hopeless. He picked me up, literally, and carried me across the street. We fought the entire way over there, I tried to wrestle free, but there was no escaping his grasps. I think that part of me was just fighting because I was scared, because I imagine part of me was excited at the idea of having a girl my age living right across the street.

We entered the house, and my brother dropped me. After recovering from the embarassement of being carried into someone's house, I met Cristin. She is a beautiful woman, but when we were that young, we both looked pretty dopey. Short blond hair, so light it looked almost white, and skin so fair that I thought that she must never leave the house.

As Cristin and I became friends I learned that she was albino, which is why her skin and hair are so light. She went to a special school for the blind, and didn't get home until almost 5pm because it was so far away. I would sit on my front lawn and call her name until she came outside to play (I said I was shy, I didn't go knock for her for a while). Since Cristin and I became such good friends, my mom talked to her mom, and they decided to sign her up at the elementary school that I went to. We've been friends ever since. She moved from across the street, to up the street, and now she lives in Baltimore, but we stay in touch, and we're still very close.