I don’t know if I’m writing this because I recently saw a documentary on television about parents and teachers putting energetic children with overactive imaginations on some sort of a drug to tone them down, calm them down, and keep them from being what they called “hyperactive.” Or if it’s because Melinda Bittle visited me for a couple of days last week.

Either way – or probably for both reasons – she is on my mind, and I want to get this off my chest. Oh, wait. Isn’t that a mixed metaphor? Never mind. Who cares.

Fact is, Melinda and I have been friends since we were 10-year-olds in Girl Scouts, reading aloud to each other from Wuthering Heights while munching on bags of chocolate covered pretzels.

She was odd then, too. I’m not sure if she was well-liked or disliked by the other girls, but I can say for certain that all of them were drawn to her. Hell, how could they not have been? Being around Melinda was like having a friend who was first-cousin to a pinwheel or a kaleidoscope … all movement and flashing colors.

She sometimes wrote these little poems in history class, and when Mr. Pomeroy would ask her a question on, say, Paul Revere or Alexander Hamilton, she would stand up and recite six or eight lines of gibberish she’d composed about, maybe Betsy Ross or Bemjamin Franklin, that was so amusing even Mr. Pomeroy couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

Outlandish and incorruptible – is that the right word? Maybe I mean “untamed” – as she was, Melinda was also brilliant. I graduated somewhere in the floating middle of my class, but she was valedictorian. And her speech at graduation, I can tell you … well, actually, I can’t tell you without suppressing a chortle ... wasn’t the least bit inspirational (the title was “College Dropouts Who Made It Big”), it was hilarious. Even Mrs. Goldbloom, our principal, laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. And when she stood up afterwards to say “Thank you, Melinda,” she paused for half-a-second before she added, still laughing, “I think.”

Well, after graduation, as so often happens, Melinda and I lost touch. I dropped out of school completely to become a writer, and she went on to study marketing in college. And after university, Melinda evolved into a sort of a media darling. Not famous for being famous, but for innovative advertising campaigns, insightful articles about marketing, and occasional appearances – she was still very funny – on radio and television talk shows.

Whenever I saw a really, really good commercial on TV, like the one with the dog reciting Shakespeare, the pear that turns into a pumpkin, or the trellis strung with Internet cables instead of ivy, I always knew that Melinda’s brain was behind it.

Well, time went on, and many years later my book, “The Trilby Dilemma,” hit number one on the New York Times Best Seller list (don’t feel that you have to buy it. You can just get it out of the library). Suddenly, my name was in the news, I was interviewed here and there, and I became a little, tiny bit famous (is that an oxymoron?), too.

Not long after an article about my novels came out in Publisher’s Weekly, I got a phone call – not an email. Not a text message. Not contact through my website – from a voice I recognized the instant I answered the phone.

“Melinda!” I exclaimed.

Next thing you know, she was standing outside my door, a suitcase in one hand, a bag of chocolate covered pretzels in the other, both of which she dropped when we gaped at each others’ faces in delight, and threw ourselves into a making-up-for-lost-lime hug.

Now, here’s the thing I wanted to say about Melinda’s visit. Not that it was great, even though it was. Not that we talked and laughed nonstop, which we did. And not that we promised to get together again within the year, which we’ll probably forget to do.

But that while she was here, she periodically noticed a picture on my wall that annoyed her, compelling her to murmur under her breath, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stand a crooked painting.” Then she would walk across the room and straighten it.

She did this with the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington in my dining room. The four tulip-mania prints in my kitchen. The Rosetti painting of Jane Morris in my hall, all of the paintings in my bedroom, guest room, TV room, and … you get the drift.

Point is, even when Melinda was here, I realized that all of the frames she had “straightened” were already straight before she “fixed” them, and that by the time we left my house for the Amtrak Station, every single one of them now hung crooked … completely lopsided … on the wall.

I guess that’s all I wanted to say about my adored friend, Melinda Bittle. She was way out-there, her mind and mouth traveling a thousand miles a minute, when she was a kid. She’s exactly the same now.

Fidgety.

Flippity.

Wild. Wacky. Adorable. Unchainable. Untameable. Brilliant.

Nowadays, school teachers, parents, and doctors would probably look upon the child of the woman she became as if she were somehow defective, put her on drugs, and label all of her wonderful mismanagement skills as an attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity.

She, and those of her ilk, may not fit in. Hell, we know that they don’t fit in. Thank God. But they make the world stand up on its tippy toes, throw back its head, smile, laugh, and applaud.

I am certain that she and I will get together again soon. Or not. But for sure, sooner or later.

And I know that I won’t straighten any of the paintings on the walls in my house for the next few days. Maybe even for the next week or two.

Crooked they are, and crooked they will stay, in honor of my friend Melinda Bittle … her eccentricity, her joy, and her lopsided magnificence.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, vibasit www.shellyreuben.com