Young BFFs inspire each other to do good in the world
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By COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star
Maggie Rine-Conway was new in first grade. She hung by herself at recess, until the day Aelyn Thompson asked her to play.
The Waverly girls became best friends, sleepovers most every weekend. They invented their own best-friends handshake — a series of intricate slaps with a bump at the end.
Last year, in third grade, they choreographed a dance for the school talent show to a song from “High School Musical 2.”
They’re doing it now, on the pink-and-orange flower rug in Aelyn’s bedroom. They’re dancing and kicking and circling each other, singing along with Ashley Tisdale as dolls and stuffed animals watch with wide eyes.
Danica Patrick watches, too, from her posters on the wall.
“This year, we could do Guns N’ Roses,” Aelyn suggests. “Maybe ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’”
The girls are the same height. They don’t know how tall. And they are the same weight, 64 pounds. They play softball and soccer on the same teams. They play with their American Girl dolls.
They have the same short bobs. Aelyn’s is blond. Maggie’s is brown. They both have boys who live across the street who like to annoy them. To annoy them back, they sing “girl songs” real loud to them, like this one.
When the music stops, they pull on their “thinking caps.” Aelyn’s is a funky green top hat. Maggie’s is a pink crocheted skullcap. They flop down on the rug and open this month’s American Girl magazine, looking for a fun art project.
They’ve been brainstorming. They want to make a camp for kids who don’t have families or are poor or sad in some way.
Aelyn opens a notebook to show the two-page list they wrote with a fat orange marker:
Grill out & campfire
Go to charity
Art project
Scavinger hunt
Dress up
Dancing
Smores
Nails
Pumpkin carving
Sock race
Four-legged race
Opstical course …
They finish each other’s thoughts.
“I like to help people,” Maggie says. “I don’t like …”
“… people feeling sad,” Aelyn says.
They are in fourth grade at Waverly Intermediate School. Sometimes they get in “little glitches,” Aelyn says.
“Like the time I thought you guys ditched me.”
But then they walk for a while and forget and it’s like nothing happened.
They have charity in their American Girl hearts.
In August, for her birthday, Maggie asked her mom to give all her presents to the Children’s Hospital in Omaha. She gave them to kids with cancer, a boy with e-coli.
In September, inspired by Maggie, Aelyn asked her mom to help brainstorm a way to help kids, too. Her mom suggested giving coats, since winter is on the way.
So one Sunday a few weeks back, Aelyn stood at the front of her family’s church and peeled off layer after layer of coats from her skinny body, from her dad’s big coat to a little kid’s coat with sleeves that came to her elbows.
People laughed.
Maggie, who sat near the back because her little brother and sister yell a lot, laughed, too.
Aelyn told everybody how she’d be collecting coats for kids until Nov. 4, her 10th birthday.
“I said, ‘Some kids aren’t lucky enough to have coats.’”
She’s collected about 60 so far. They wait on the floor of big brother Brady’s bedroom in a nest-like fortress the girls made.
They run to his room.
Aelyn falls backward onto the pile. Maggie jumps in, too, landing like a frog.
“Can we have a sleepover tonight?” Maggie says.
“OK!” Aelyn shouts, throwing her arms in air. “A sleepover!”
They do their best-friends handshake to seal the deal, then remember to ask their moms.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
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