My niece can't kill caterpillars. So I couldn't wait for her to start voting.

Enjoying the Pacific Ocean.

When my niece visited us as a young girl, I asked her to help me in the garden by plucking caterpillars off my tomato plants. When I came back to check on her she had found at least a dozen, but she hadn't put them in the soapy water I gave her.
"I can't kill them," she said sadly, pointing to the pile she had carefully made of all the caterpillars.

That was cool.

I loved her for that. I loved that she pulled the caterpillars off my plants like I wanted, but kept them alive like she wanted.

And what I love even more now about that sweet, sensitive girl is that she can't wait to start voting. She would have last November if she had turned 18 in time. But her birthday was the day after the election.
"I'm really mad about it, actually," she told me at the time, explaining that while she didn't do as much research as she would have had if she knew she were voting, she did pay enough attention to the tight Senate races in her home state of Arizona to want to "put my vote in. I also wanted to be a voter, too!"

I felt her frustration. I have voted every chance I got since I turned 18, and I would have been livid if my birthday was a day after that first election. But I was also happy she was upset, because it means she wants to be a voter.

And call me crazy, but I think people who can't kill caterpillars make good humans. And those are the humans I want voting.

Update: She is now ready to vote in the Nov. 3, 2020 election, and just might help turn a red state blue.