This is going to sound strange, Maxine Box says, but 50 years later, she can't forget it:

Barack Obama's mother used to crack her knuckles."Constantly," Box told me as we sat in her Bellevue home on the eve of Super Tuesday, talking about Stanley Dunham, the girl with the man's name and the son who could be president of the United States.

Box, 65, was Dunham's best friend at Mercer Island High School, where they were members of the Class of 1960.