My finger curved under very far when I wanted it to. Mommy's did too, but nobody else seemed to be able to do this. Just Mommy and me. We liked to show people how we made our finger look like a half-moon. I had one special toe I called "Putzer." I talked to Putzer all the time.

The landlord wanted to move into our home after a while, so we had to find another house. The only house we could afford, because houses cost so much money, was the house next door to Ford, #113. He lived at 115 W. Pennsylvania Avenue with his mother, Mary, his father, Warren, and his sister, Cathy, and a beagle. Mommy met Mary and Warren when they first came from Florida to Urbana because our mothers belonged to the Artists' Studio Group above the Busey Bank.

It was a funny coincidence. Ford and I were next to each other in our bassinets in the nursery in the hospital, and then we lived next to each other in Urbana.

When we lived in Champaign, the city next door to Urbana, I sucked my left thumb all the time because there weren't any friends there like Ford. I was lonely.

Mommy went to see Mary one day to have a visit when I was twelve months and two weeks old. They talked about Ford and me and said we might walk before long.

I was home with Daddy. He put me in a corner and took everything away from me. Then I had to walk. I screamed. But then I knew I could walk and run without falling, and I ran to the door to meet Mommy when she came home. Her eyes nearly popped out when she saw me running to the door. She was so proud. So was I. She called Mary on the telephone to tell her about it.

Not very long after that, my friend Ford got to be my very best friend. he lived next door, so we played together all the time. We had games nobody else knew about.

We had all kinds of games with our "imaginations." Nobody else ever could even dream up such games except Ford and me. We liked to play together more than with anybody else. I never played with anybody else like Ford.

There were many other children on the block, and I liked to play with the very little ones sometimes, especially one little girl named Elizabeth Ann. She let me decide when she had quarrels with the other children.

Her mother said Elizabeth Ann "sensed" I was fair and just. That was very nice of her. Later on, I decided who was right when all the little children had quarrels, and they listened too. I loved them very much.

When we moved to the street in Urbana, I could walk and run, and I could talk in long sentences. Mommy went around smiling because I was only eighteen months old, and I was able to speak "perfect grammatical sentences, involved and complex." I didn't know what that meant, but I was glad that I could talk clearly. Everyone understood what I meant.

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