Across the parking lot from my company is another building exactly like ours. In that building there is a very nice woman who appears to be the receptionist. Three or four days a week, she picks her 10 or 11 year old daughter up from school and brings her to work until she's done for the day. Our office staff affectionately calls her The Bee Girl. If you've ever seen the Blind Melon "No Rain" video, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, go here to watch, and then come back. It'll all make sense then.

She's an awkward girl, who is obviously quite self-entertained. She "performs" on the sidewalk outside the building every day. Some days she sings, others she dances. Occasionally she'll read a book aloud, as if she was teaching a class. The best days, however, are when she's out there putting on a play or some other theatrical production. She plays all the parts herself, and the empty parking lot is her audience. She's very demonstrative and will make a great community theater actress someday. She quiets only a little when one of us leave our building to get the mail or go to our car, but never stops completely. It's like she's lost in her own little world, and we're just a tiny reminder that other people exist outside of it. My favorite day was when she was out there in her pink shirt, pink shorts, playing with her pink soccer ball, and had shin guards over her one black with pink and one grey with pink socks. It was just so fantastically awful. I wanted to go give her a hug.

I love the Bee Girl. She's awkward and geeky and weird, and yet completely reminds me of myself at her age. The difference being she's a dork who's full of confidence and imagination, and I was am just a dork. She'll never know that she makes me smile almost every day, but I hope someday she'll see a little girl just like she was, and it'll make her smile too.