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Indifference is probably the most damaging emotion, or lack of emotion, anyone can allow to exist. Who was it who said, “Love me or hate me, but for God’s sake don’t ignore me!” And the most destructive of all types of indifference is parental indifference. That this can have a profound effect for the worse on an individual is just now being realized by psychologists who are probing our nation’s steadily increasing crime rate. So many of the kids who turn to lives of crime have an inadequate home life; one parent, usually the father, is often missing, while the remaining parent may actually be unconcerned by the child’s problems or, just as important, may seem indifferent because of the need to be absent from the home for work or other reasons. Whatever the reasons, an ignored child becomes mischievous, doing more and more outrageous things in an attempt to gain attention from the parents he thinks have scorned him.
As she walked down the arrow-straight road from the school bus towards home, her head barely cleared the taller hedges and her blonde hair tossed at her shoulders, one of which was slightly raised from the effort of carrying her schoolbooks. She had a light, inoffensive manner of staring through every gate and through every window which looked inviting as she stepped along. The quickness of her glance seemed right for her pert walk, her smallish, lean frame, her age — but this quick gaze was dictated also by the quickness of her mind and temperament.
Ellen Johnston was precocious, an inventive young genius, a little dynamo. Her long blonde hair twirled as she spun her head for a quick look at anything interesting — but what interested her most in this old, familiar Cape Cod neighborhood was not the respectably stuffy people or the fifty thousand dollar houses so much as the newness of her own experience. Ellen was fast becoming a woman, and she was very much aware of the fact, and aware too of the subtle changes that were going on inside her slowly maturing body.
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.