Last night, I babysat my neighbors. This altogether was an interesting experience. The two children in this family are named Will and Hallie. I've babysat them for...five years now. When I first started, Will was five and Hallie was two. Now, Will is ten and Hallie is seven. Whoa! I feel like I'm growing up with them. They are almost like my little siblings now. But this time around, I wasn't just babysitting the usual kids. Hallie went off with a friend to spend the night, and will had a friend over named Houston. Now, Will is one of the shyest people I know. I've been babysitting them for so long, and even if I stop babysitting them for a month or so, I have to re-open him up. He has been neighbors with my parents for almost six years, and he still has trouble even saying "hi" to them. Whenever he does so, he stares at the ground in discomfort. So having his good friend Houston around made things interesting. First off, he talked about girls he thought were "hot." It is rather flabbergasting to have watched someone grow from an innocent little child who said "ew" everytime someone on TV even so much as pecked to a boy with rapidly increasing interests in the slender women with cleavage in Hollywood. Next, Will never really talked much. But before I knew it, Houston, Will and I were engaged in a conversation about what we thought was going to happen to mankind in the end. Are we going to kill ourselves off, or will nature itself kill us merely by running its natural course? Will we run out of oil, and scramble desperately while millions die to find means of producing energy and finding natural resources to keep the living alive? Will we use up all our natural resources, and then just starve to death? Will we survive to the very end, and die because of the expanding sun graduating to its red giant stage and burning the earth to a crisp? It was very interesting to listen to what they had to say. And very interesting to see Will open up as a result of the presence of Houston. Anyway, they have a lot of potential. Young ten year olds don't usually talk about things like that, and think so deeply. His parents should be very proud! :-)