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GREENSBORO - This one's about a big-toothed little girl, and she's flying to China today to cover the Olympics.

She's Meghan Davis. And she's all grown up.

In front of me I see a 22-year-old grad from UNC-Chapel Hill. But in my mind, I'll always see a 7-year-old second-grader from Greensboro's Lindley Elementary.

Fourteen years ago, while covering education for the News & Record, I visited Gayle Wiley's class to see the particulars of their pen-pal program with a private school in India.

And there, in the second row, second seat, was Meghan.

She gave me one of those we-need-to-know-about-the-world quotes. Of course, I used it. It was good. And I knew her grandparents, her parents, her aunt and her uncles, one of whom was one of my best friends.

But I didn't know her. That all changed in one of the most unlikely places on Earth: near the coal mines of eastern Kentucky.

During a weeklong work trip with our church, Meghan became my co-worker. We helped build a few houses. We laid insulation, put up siding, and sang "Brick House" badly, loudly and off-key.

I regaled her with stories about her family, and she confided in me about the vulnerability of being a gangly 11-year-old, the oldest child of a minister mom and minister dad, who felt ping-ponged by mean-girl cliques.

She later became my baby sitter and my dependable student on Sunday mornings. And in between our talks about music, Rolling Stone magazine and the latest episode of "Gilmore Girls," she told me about her interest in writing.

Meanwhile, I toted her and her Sunday school crew to see Goth rock god Marilyn Manson - and write about it - and I recruited her to write a few things for the News & Record and TriadStyle, the defunct alt-weekly I once ran.

I tried to talk her out of going into journalism. The future is too tenuous, the hours too long, the pay too puny, I told her. Of course, she didn't listen.

So, in the summer of 2005, she became my intern when I ran Go Triad. I wanted her to get started right, and I wanted her to write about everything.

She did. Then, it hit me. On the second floor. During her assignment to cover Alexander Devereux's hip-hop night.

I went along, feeling more like a protective uncle than a meddlesome teacher. And at nearly 2 a.m., I watched as a talented emcee I know towered over her, draping his arm around her shoulder and singing to her in the middle of the dance floor.

Meghan, I said to myself, is growing up. Let ... her ... go.

In May, after more internships and bigger responsibilities at the Daily Tar Heel, UNC-Chapel Hill's student newspaper, Meghan graduated with degrees in journalism and peace, war and defense studies.

And today, she's off to Beijing. She'll be one of 25,000 journalists covering the Olympics in a country where journalists have been jailed, harassed and threatened with death.

The girl's not scared. She told me that. She's not even getting paid, and she's spent nearly $2,800 of her own money - at least two years' worth of baby-sitting money - to get there. She sees it as a cool opportunity.

It is. She'll chase quotes for the Olympic News Service, the news division for the International Olympic Committee, cover Olympic basketball and talk to Olympians such as Mike Krzyzewski.

And she's never been a Duke fan.

Then, in late August, she'll return to Greensboro, join her reporter boyfriend, Daniel Malloy, in Pittsburgh and begin a new life with someone who'll be her husband before I can even blink.

Initially, she worried - no job, no security other than the love between two people. But then again, Meghan has never been afraid of a challenge.

Even at 2 in the morning.

So, for the past few weeks, I've had to tell myself over and over, you gotta let her go.

That big-toothed little girl. She's all grown up.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com