The 10-year-old ponytailed blonde is sitting cross-legged in a rocking chair in her small Austin, Texas, bedroom. Maps and nature posters cover every inch of wall space. When Lisa talks. her words tumble out so quickly that she can barely catch her breath. Right now she’s talking about her major worries: pollution, overpopulation, burglars, the homeless, world hunger and the inability of everyone to get an education. Those are some of the reasons she wants to be president. “I figure, well, when I get older, I could try and change all those things…I just want it to be a perfect world.”
In her own world, Lisa thinks it’s “stupid” for her friends to waste time on clothes and makeup. She almost never wastes time. Her twin cravings–for doing good and getting ahead–take care of that. Last fall she organized a reseeding project at a wilderness area that had been ravaged by fire. She takes karate lessons three days a week, serves as her school’s student-council president and captain of the safety patrol, reports for a TV kids’ show and has helped launch a school newspaper. She also founded an environmental committee to clean up the neighborhood. “Lisa,” says her mother “doesn’t like having ‘downtime’.”
Lisa’s drive was shaped largely by Lisa’s siblings: her two older brothers are highly accomplished students and athletes. Observing their triumphs while growing up only fueled her desire to match stride. “I want to do well,” she says. “I feel like achieving something.” In fact, Lisa can’t wait to become an official adult. “It’s hard being a kid,” she complains, arching her brows. “You can’t have your own money. You can’t have your own house. You always have to ask your parents before you go and do anything.” For all her yearnings for independence, Lisa regards the Molofsky home (her mother is a school nurse, her father a health-center manager) as a kind of refuge from her turbocharged existence. “When I’m at school, I’m really in control of my self. But when I get home I’m so tired I don’t really care how I act. I know whatever 1 do my parents are not going to drop me because they’re my parents.”
The only other moments that approximate downtime in Lisa’s life come in a stand of woods near her home. She likes to go there alone–to talk to the plants and the trees and, for once, to confront being Lisa. “There’s no one to bother you,” she says, her voice suddenly slow. “You can just stand there and it’s real quiet. I guess it gives me a chance to think.” She does not mention the word “play.”
