Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm going up to see my granddaughter in a couple of weeks and I'm getting excited.  She'll be nine, and she's a fascinating character.  She was strong willed from the get go, and I love little girls with opinions.  I like the feisty ones, and identify.  I heard my mother complain about me often enough that I can reconstruct my nature.  I defied her, and was not "proper".  She said as a toddler when we took the bus in Kansas City that I would go up to strangers and say, "You want to see me sing and dance?"  I'm still kind of like that, though I had a shy streak as well, and needed time by myself.  Reading was my salvation, though my mother was constantly urging me to go outside and get fresh air.  The result:  I read in the woods, in the fields, in barns and under trees.  My granddaughter is a great reader as well, and imaginative and amazingly well informed as a result.  She has her own online newspaper, her political opinions and a voracity for life.  She got it from her mother, but her mother got some of it from me!