I'm not sharing this story to have anyone say "we are awesome" or pat us on the back in anyway. I'm simply sharing this story to show you how simple it is to help.
I took my 4-year-old-Birthday Boy on a date today and he picked "that place you SMASH peanuts"...Five Guys for those that have never been.
As soon as we sat down and began smashing {him the nuts and me the food}, I noticed a man who came in looking kinda haggard, carrying numerous plastic bags and bought only a large pop. He sat close to us and it become obvious that he had used whatever money he had to buy the drink to come inside and get outta the hot sun for a bit. The entire time I debated in my head whether I should go over and offer to buy him lunch. I didn't want to offend him in case I read the situation completely wrong and that easily could have been the case.
I purposely played "Eye Spy" with Noal so that I could stalk him & the situation out as much as possible. And when we were about to leave & throw out the extra fries that we couldn't finish, I felt overwhelmingly guilty and decided to teach my son an important lesson. To go with your gut and intuition - My first thought was to help this man, so that's exactly what we needed to do.
I grabbed Noal's hand and we went over to him and I said, "It's my son's birthday today and we would really like to do something cool, like buy a stranger lunch. Would you mind if we bought you something?"
He seemed shocked and I thought he might be offended and yell at us to get-the-hell-outta-there. But his eyes soon went from shock to almost tears as he told me what he would like. Noal repeated his order and I'm sure I messed up the toppings on his burger, but not only did we make that man's day, we showed every single person in that packed little Five Guys, that we all should help when we can.
As Noal and I left hand in hand, I couldn't help but thank Fate for the perfect Birthday lesson. It feels so good to help y'all, do something kind for someone today.
3 Comments
Such a sweet story! I hope to teach my children these same types of lessons one day!
ReplyDeleteKayla | http://kaylablogs.com
You are an incredible woman and mother. You paid it forward in a manner that allowed the gentleman to maintain his dignity and you taught your child something that every parent should teach their child(ren). This made me smile as much as all your posts make me smile. Thank you for reminding me that I too, can do something to help someone that doesn't have what I have.
ReplyDeleteWe need more stories like this one. Empathy in action! I'd live to talk with you about my academy's initiative, Empathy Day. We also have your calendar at our academy. :) To see what we do check us out at www.jungdo.ca.
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