I was watching the news the other day. There is a man who has become quite adept at
purse snatching at a local day care. In
the time it takes a mother to walk inside the building and retrieve her child
he can emerge, break the car window, remove the purse, and disappear. I guess he is extremely successful.
Stories like this are common. And they are followed by a consistent dose of
government stalemate, international discord, and large scale disasters. As many have observed and lamented, the news
might be more aptly named the bad news. Despite
the deluge of negative press, I have found people to be generally kind, generous,
and polite. The small acts of kindness I
frequently witness will almost certainly never be considered worth reporting. I,
however, am not a news outlet of any scale, and I don’t care what is
newsworthy. And so, this is the first in what I hope
becomes a very long series of posts in which I intend to chronicle the small
and seemingly insignificant moments of kindness that I frequently experience.
-------
Friday was errands with Mom day. We woke up early and packed a breakfast of
cheerios, raisins, and string cheese. We
dropped the Texan off at work so that we could have a car for the day. Our first and most important
errand was a visit to the pumpkin patch.
It was a lot of fun, and we spent much longer there than I anticipated. It was well after lunchtime when we
left.
The next errand on the list was grocery shopping. I’m still pretty new to the whole mom thing,
but one thing I am fairly certain of is that taking two hot, hungry, and tired
toddlers to the grocery store is a very bad idea. Another thing that I am acutely aware of is
that once I get two hot, hungry, and tired toddlers home to be cooled, fed, and
rested, the chances of me getting back out for more errands are quite
slim.
We decided to go to Costa Vida. (That would be the Royal We. The junior redheads don’t really get a vote
in such matters.) The fact that it
shared a parking lot with the grocery store was really the determining
factor. As it turns out, Costa Vida has
a much different lunchtime clientele than Chic-fil-a. Rather than the mommy crew I found myself
surrounded by the left-the-office-for-a-quick-lunch crowd. And while Costa Vida does have a children’s
menu, I found them to be conspicuously lacking high chairs.
This was not the first, and I do not expect it to be the
last, meal I have eaten with a small child on my lap. It is one of my newly acquired talents. We were quickly situated, and soon both of my children were happily chewing on a quesadilla. Just as the group sitting next to us got up
to leave my little girl decided that black beans would probably make excellent
face paint. After smashing them quite
thoroughly in one hand, she shifted them to the other in a demonstration of her
ever improving dexterity. Then she
smeared them on her cheeks and accidentally put a few in her mouth. Eating the food was clearly not her intention
and she angrily sprayed the stray beans out of her mouth at her brother.
On his way out the door one man looked back and noticed her
antics. He came back in and told me not
to move. He brought us a handful of
napkins and stopped for a minute to chat.
He told me a little bit about his five year old son. He took some time to say hello to my kids and
play some peek-a-boo. He told me they
were adorable. Then he went back to work
leaving me with two well-fed and cheerful kids that were ready to go grocery
shopping.
Therefore, I conclude that the world is not full of purse
snatching jerks.
