If Ramona the Pest had been the oldest child, and if she had been allowed to run around as if she were one of the boys like Caddie Woodlawn, and 
if she never did learn to be happy in a group of people moving more slowly than she wanted to move (or sitting still for any reason) ... and if she had then been fed a steady diet of J.R.R.Tolkein and C.S.Lewis and E.Nesbit and L.M.Montgomery (and it occurs to me to wonder what effect it might have had that all these authors have initials for first names!) ... and then if 
that girl had been "ready" to leave home before her seventeenth birthday ... and if she had gone on to admire the work of Sedaris and Potok and Ira Glass, and most of all, above all others, the towering J.D.Salinger 
(leading us back to the initialed name ... what is up with that?) ... and then if that same person turned into a woman while working out in the woods and building trails and sweating and thinking and being pulled pulled pulled out of herself and into her life (which gave her herself) ... well, apparently that person turns into someone who does the public speaking part at graduation from the Army's Basic Training. That's what our girl is doing tomorrow. She's the Narrator at graduation. (Only the Army would "narrate" a graduation!)I'm very proud of her - I'm sure that's obvious. But I'm equally bemused. Kids are like a box of choc'lates, apparently, and you never know what you're gonna get.
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