The little girl across the street came to the door this morning, selling her art.

She had a bundle of magic marker drawings on standard 8¹/₂ x 11 white paper. The top one looked like a couple purple papooses in red bundling. Or else smiling purple caterpillars in red cocoons.

She had one that said "Happy Father's Day", that was of a pair of very cute little cars, one big and one small, all smiley.

She was only asking a dollar each.

I shoulda bought one, but I didn't.

I suggested she should have given the cute cars to her Dad, but she said she only drew it to sell.

We first met last summer when she came by trying to buy quarters. With a handful of nickels, dimes and pennies. I gave her two quarters for 50 cents, but she was still disappointed. She tried to buy a third quarter with her last nickel and two pennies.

Turns out she needed 3 quarters for the pop machine at the rec center.

Aha! If it was for something useful, I would have given her the third quarter for 7 cents, but not for soda pop. First off, I know it isn't good for her, and secondly, it is quite possible her folks don't want her to have soda. Hence the campaign through the neighborhood to scarf up change to support her sugar habit.

So no third quarter. But we were still friends. The heelers liked her, and she introduced them to her friends.

When her little brother broke the metal railing on their porch, I was the one she led the babysitter to in hopes that it could be repaired and save them from that horror of horrors, a mad Dad.

Nope, sorry kid. Need a welder to fix that. Best just take your lumps. But we were still friends.

Until this winter when I caught her and her buds sliding down my snowpile by the driveway (no big deal, except they broke a main branch off the aspen... the aspen that took years to amount to anything because the sons and their friends always broke it off every winter doing the same thing) and turning on our water tap to make frozen slush and ice on the sidewalk and our driveway to extend their sliding into the street.

It is nice to know we're still on speaking terms, but I suspect the dollar for the art work is probably for the pop machine again.

But I still shoulda bought one. The cars were cute.