Honesty, Energy and Joy

Over the fourth of July holiday, my family came to town for a visit. I always love seeing my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and especially, my niece. You know how it is, we are all busy and we hardy get to see them as much as I would love. Contrary to tradition, I actually love and like my wife’s family a lot.

When they came to town this time, I was particularly blown away by my niece. She is still in her early single digits by age, but she taught me a great lesson I don’t think I could have learned from a room full of bearded, gray-haired professors.

There are three things she has that I found profound and humorous at the same time and after letting it percolate a bit, I had to put it to paper. In no particular order, the three things this young genius taught me were a new found appreciation for Honesty, Energy and Joy.

Okay, I admit all kids have a warehouse full of energy, but the simplicity of a child’s energy is captivating to watch and a bit exhaustive at the same time. Just like the energizer bunny, my niece kept going and going and going, and… I admit, I may be getting older, but it was really amazing to be let into her world for a short time and enjoy some of the simple pleasures of a bug on a leaf, knocking tiny apples off her grandma’s apples tree, running down the driveway for no apparent reason other than…because, and clearly and with great articulation introducing herself to the neighbors at her grandmothers house. This is where the honesty part comes in. These two guys were in the driveway next door, and were trying to close a garage door. The problem was that as both my niece and I could clearly see, closing the garage door was going to cause the door to hit the hood of a car that was sticking out of the garage. After observing for a moment, my young prophet said, “Hi, what’s your name? My name is A,” - name withheld to protect the brilliant. Without a pause, she immediately blurted out, “you know, that door is probably gonna hit your car.” The two guys looked at her as we all probably would, not giving it a second thought. My niece went on, “this is my grandma’s house,” and without another second came a second warning, “you know, I think that door is gonna hit your car, that would be too bad if that happened.” Still, no signal they were going to listen and she went back to swinging for the fences hitting those apples.

You probably can guess what happened. The door came down and hit the car. The two guys were none too happy, but a youthful joy cam over my niece’s face, a kinda “I told you so” look, without rubbing it in. She went about her way, hitting the apples, running down the driveway and seemingly taking solice that once again, she was right.