Survived The Plane

My name is Lillian Mackenzie May. I am ten and a half years old. I just moved to New Hampshire. My mom says that the move will be a big adjustment for me, those are her words, not mine. But Max, my mom’s boyfriend says I'm going to “be just great kiddo”. That’s what he calls me, kiddo. As if I’m seven years old. I've overheard my mom tell people that Max “does well with me” but I don’t see what he has to do well with, how about me? I’m the one dealing with a man who thinks it is cool to wear a baseball hat from when he was in college. Imagine the germs that thing has, it must be a hot bed for bacteria. My mom also tells people I'm a hypochondriac.

So long west coast

Needless to say I avoid any and all contact with Max. He tried to high five me this morning before we got on the plane, as if I should be excited that I was about to be in what some consider a tube of death, with about 200 people breathing the same contaminated, poorly circulated air. In fact the woman sitting directly behind me coughed on multiple occasions without covering her mouth. Now that I think about it, she was breathing pretty heavy as well. Like a bulldog with asthma, what if I just got pneumonia from this lady? That would be just a fantasist way to start the week. I want to look up the symptoms now but I don’t know which of the million boxes mom packed my book in. For all I know she probably used this move as an excuse to leave it in California. I know how much she hates it, she thinks its crazy for a girl like me to be spending so much of my time looking up diseases and germs in a book where I could be doing things more "age appropriate". I guess it’s not a totally ridiculous request for her to ask that I try to limit my reading in it.
Ever since the anthrax incident a few months ago she has been really on edge. A girl takes it upon herself to take a cab to the hospital to get diagnosed with anthrax and her mom acts like she ran away from home to live on the streets. Turns out, I didn’t have anthrax. After that my mom made me promise that I would “chill” out after we moved. Although I feel she over reacted when she found out I went to the hospital alone, I hate to see her upset. So I am really going to try once we get settled in to not worry about catching ill. She wants me to “experience” being a kid, make lots of friends, get into trouble, "scrap my knees" (that was taking it too far, I understand the friends, but why give myself open wounds susceptible to infection?). I told her I'm going to do my best. She thinks it would be a good idea for me to start keeping a log of what I do, in the hopes that when I read them I will realize how "ridiculous my fears really are".  I love my mom so I told her I would give it try. But we can't all be as carefree as she is all the time.