Mateo looked at the paper in his hand and smiled. He felt one of the greatest feelings of satisfaction he had ever felt. But then a memory came back to him—one that was a mix of both good and bad.
Mateo was only ten when he came to the United States. . . .
A friend of ours came to visit. She had two little girls. Susan was five, and Tiffany was three. I enjoyed these two children. They were both cute and smart. But the things I enjoyed the most were that Susan talked like an adult, and she was a voracious . . .
My university colleagues and I always tried to find summer work and then returned to share stories of our adventures. But John’s story was unsurpassed that year.
As he had in other years, John found work in Yellowstone National Park doing trail maintenance. . . .
As I watched the veterans ride by on a big trailer in the Fourth of July parade, I was reminded of a good man I had grown to know and love.
I first met Bob the day the men from my church gathered to cut and haul wood for a widow in our community. I . . .
My two-year-old granddaughter, Hannah, loves animals. When she comes to our house and I take her for a walk, we have to stop and pet every cat or dog that she sees. Hannah especially loves to go out in the backyard and pet our golden retrievers. They . . .
Jennifer’s children wanted a dog. That is normal for children, and Jennifer decided that maybe it would be good for them to learn responsibility. So Jennifer sat down with them and talked to them about how important it would be that the dogs were . . .
Sometimes it is hard to find humor in our current situation. But I got an email the other day with an ad regarding having to stay at home during the pandemic. It was about exercise equipment. It started by saying, “Let’s talk about the elephant . . .
Earl was a hard-working, family-oriented man. He, his wife, and their children ran a little country store in a small western town. In the area where they lived, there was a lot of excitement about a new branch of the railroad that would be coming through.
When the rail line work started, many new people came. Most of these were families of men who were working on the railroad. Earl’s business increased significantly. But bringing the goods in was costly. Until the rail line was finished, everything had to come over the mountain on mules and wagons.
Earl tried to keep his prices fair. He only added enough markup on goods to pay his costs and take care of his family. But many people complained about the prices at Earl’s store. Most of these were people who had come from other towns much farther south. These towns already had train service and didn’t have the added transportation costs.
Earl and his family had endured the anger and name-calling for some time when the flu epidemic hit. Of all the families in the town, his family was hit the hardest. Many people came in and out of this store, and many carried the flu. Soon, Earl’s whole family was sick.
Though Earl worked from morning until night taking care of his family, he tried to keep his store open as much as possible. He knew the people of the town depended on it. But Earl lost four of his six children, and his wife was bedridden. There were days he had to shut the store to bury his children or just take care of his family. This added more to the anger he received from those who came to town only to find the store closed.
One day, when Earl was driving to the cemetery with the body of his two-year-old daughter in a small pine box, a crowd surrounded his wagon. They started yelling things at him about being rich while others struggled, and him not caring about anyone else. Suddenly, the crowd went crazy. Someone pulled Earl from the wagon, and men began beating him.
Almost instantly, the railroad foreman was there. He knew of the losses Earl had in his family and had even helped Earl bury some of his children. The foreman angrily hit and kicked his way into the circle, single-handedly forcing the men to stop. The foreman helped Earl to his feet, then climbed onto the wagon and held up the small coffin as he spoke.
“You bunch of fools! You blame Earl for your problems when you don’t even know what real problems are. In this box lies the body of his youngest daughter, the fourth of his children he has had to bury. Which one of you would be willing to trade him places? Which of you would be willing to take his store in exchange for those you love?”
The foreman then turned to one of the men who was foremost in the beating. “How about you, John? You haven’t lost a single family member to the flu. Which one of your children’s lives would you like to trade for Earl’s store? How about Timothy or maybe little Susan?”
John couldn’t even look at the foreman as he shook his head. The foreman asked a similar question of others and received a similar response.
“Well, then,” the foreman said, “when you imagine how much better you think it is for someone else, I’d suggest you consider what it would be like to walk in their shoes all the way, not just on the parts of their journey that you like.”
The foreman reached out a hand and pulled Earl back onto the wagon. He then turned to the crowd. “I suggest you get back to your work. As for me, I plan to go to the cemetery and help dig a small grave.”
As Earl and the foreman drove to the cemetery, no one returned to their work. Instead, they followed the wagon. As many men helped dig the small grave next to the three new markers that were already there, no one said a word. But as Earl fell to his knees sobbing when the little wooden box was placed into its place, people in that small country town were changed forever.
As years passed, people who came to that town said there was never a town with more compassion. The old-timers would nod and say it was because those who lived there had to learn the hard way what it was like to walk in someone else’s shoes.
Coach blew his whistle, which brought us to a stop. His favorite conditioning exercise was to have us run on our hands and knees back and forth across the wrestling room. He started us off by blowing his whistle and ended the exercise in the same way. . . .
We looked at available surgery dates. I wanted to get it done before Christmas so I would have more time to heal before going back to work in January. But I needed to move the harp for my daughter until December 22nd. That only left December 24th for the surgery date. I had the nurse schedule it. Later, when I met with my family, I let them know.
“Can we have Christmas on the 23rd?” my daughter asked. “If we have it on Christmas right after you have had your surgery, you will probably be grouchy. I’d rather not have my father be grouchy on Christmas.”
I told her I didn’t think I would be grouchy, but agreed to celebrate Christmas on the 23rd, anyway. It ended up being a nice day. We opened presents and then invited another daughter that lived close by to bring her family and join us when we went out to eat. We scheduled it so her husband could come from work during his lunch hour. It was fun.
The next day, as I headed to the hospital, I must admit that all I could think about was when I was 45, and my tonsils were removed. For two hours before being wheeled back, I was in a room where the broken tv could not be shut off and was locked onto a channel that played only Barney reruns.
By the time they came to get me, I was feeling like, “Just shoot me now!”
However, this time the room I was put in for surgery preparation didn’t even have a tv. I was okay with that. Many people came in to take my vitals and talk to me about recovery. Four of them asked me which shoulder was being operated on. When I told them it was my left, they marked it with a marker.
As the fourth person made his mark, I said, “Don’t you trust the other three people who marked it already?”
He laughed. “A person can never be too careful.”
After he left, I told my wife Donna to hand me a marker.
“Why?” she asked.
“I think I ought to put marks all over me just to confuse them.”
She did not think that was even funny and made sure there were no markers anywhere in the room. She said that removing my access to markers was her part of being careful.
Eventually, I was wheeled into the surgery room.
The anesthesiologist leaned over me. “It will take about ten minutes for you to fade off to sleep.”
Ten minutes, nothing. I was out almost instantly after he said it, and if I said anything past that point, I want to make it clear that I can’t legally be held responsible for it. The next thing I remember was having someone patting me, calling me by name, and asking me how I was doing.
“Did you get the number?” I groggily replied.
“Of what?” she asked.
“Of the license plate of the truck that hit me.”
I heard my wife laugh. “I think he’s going to be fine.”
And I’m not admitting that I was grouchy. But my daughter was probably smart to have had us celebrate Christmas on the 23rd.
And the bullet? Well, it remains in my arm as a souvenir of some exciting day from my youth. I just wish I could remember which day.
A good friend of mine, Blaine, was a World War II veteran. He was one of the most patriotic men I knew, even if he had many reasons not to be.
As a young man, Blaine, like many others his age, found himself embroiled in the bitterness of war. After . . .
When I first met my wife, she was a music major and played in a dance band. I was in athletics. My children have tended to follow their mother’s interests more than mine. Every one of them is an excellent musician.
To be honest, I do play the harmonica, . . .
I knew that Brent had gone on an extended vacation, so when he returned, I asked him how it went.
“Well, I learned some things about myself, and I also learned some things about my family and what not to do,” he said.
When I asked him what he meant, . . .
My cousin Becky loves gardening about as much as I do. We often compare notes on what works and what doesn’t.
“How do you do on your tomatoes?” she asked.
“Oh, I do okay,” I said.
“Do you do anything special?”
“Not really,” I replied. . . .
My daughter was in her mid-teens—those years when young people think that their parents don’t know too much. She chafed at the requirements of home, having to do chores, having a set time for bed, and eating what everyone else in the family ate . . .
My roommate, David, was dating a girl named Annie. She was beautiful, with blonde hair that hung down past her shoulders, and she had big blue eyes. But what made her especially beautiful was her kindness. David would invite her to join us in games . . .
It was the day after Thanksgiving. As a police officer, Samuel was preparing to go on patrol, but he had to fill out the required reports first. Paperwork was the thing he hated most. He much preferred to be out on the streets. He finished his reports . . .
About halfway between the two schools was a small town. It was small even by Idaho standards. In fact, it was so small that it consisted of only one house and a café. But as small as it was, it was on the map. Blue Dome, it was called.
Probably the reason it was on the map was because there wasn’t anything else for miles around. It was a lone outpost in an area with interesting trails leading up into mountains with intriguing names like Diamond Peak, Copper Mountain, and Skull Canyon. But I found my greatest interest in the lives of the old couple that ran the café.
I was a young teenager when I first met them. I was traveling on my first athletic trip. We had a long day of wrestling, then headed home at around 9:00 at night. It was late when we made it to Blue Dome, but the open sign still showed, so our bus pulled to a stop. As the team members spilled out of the bus and into the café, I looked at the hours that were posted and realized the café was just ready to close. But after we entered, the little old couple worked hard cooking and serving as if they planned to stay open all night.
I didn’t have much money, so I sat on a stool at the counter apart from the others and ordered a water.
“Nothing else?” the old man asked.
“I don’t have a lot of money,” I said.
After everyone else was served, he came back over and asked if there was anything else he could do for me.
“Well,” I slowly said, “there is one thing. I’d love to know your story and the story of this place.”
He smiled. “I sometimes get that request from adults, but I think you’re the first young person who has ever asked.”
My memory has faded over the years, but I think I remember that his name was John. He told me how he met his wife and how they settled in this out-of-the-way place. He talked about his family and about running the café. When my teammates needed something, John would slip away to serve or to help his wife and then return and continue his stories.
Once everyone else was heading to the bus, I put the little bit of money I had on the counter.
“Water’s free,” John said.
“Then take that as a tip for the stories,” I said. “I would come here just for them.”
John smiled and brought his wife over and introduced her to me. She looked as old as John, but to see their eyes sparkle when they looked at each other was more beautiful than any young love.
All the others were on the bus when Coach came in and called me to hurry. I joined the others, and they teased me about my “old friends.” But on the way home, I thought about the wonderful couple I had met.
After that, every sports bus I traveled in on that long road stopped at Blue Dome, and I spent my time visiting with John. On the last one, as everyone hurried out, John stopped me before I left.
“Have you signed our wall?” he asked.
I looked at where he was pointing and saw a wall with hundreds of names. I shook my head.
He handed me a marker. “You better sign it.”
The team impatiently waited while I signed the wall. And I received the usual teasing, but I didn’t care. I liked my old friends. But it was only about a week later when I read the bad news in the paper. The café had burned down and John had died in the fire.
And now, though it has been a long time, sometimes when I travel that road I will stop at Blue Dome. There is nothing left to see but a crumbling old cabin and the café foundation. But there are lots of memories, and I like to take the time to stop and remember an old friend.
He was a state champion wrestler and competed in college athletics. He also lived for eighteen months in New York when he was 19 – 21 years old.
Daris and his wife, Donna, have ten children and were foster parents for several years. He has also worked in scouting and cub scouts, at one time having 18 boys in his scout troop.
Daris is now a math professor and his classes are well known for the stories he tells to liven up discussion and to help bring across the points he is trying to teach.
His plays, musicals, and books build on the characters of those he has associated with, along with his many experiences. He also writes a popular weekly newspaper column called “Life’s Outtakes” that are short stories from his life and the lives of those he has known. His scripts and books are much like his stories, full of humor and real life experiences.
He has had his plays translated into German and French and performed in many countries around the world.
His plays have won many awards including the National Theatre Co-op Award, the Deseret Dramatic Award, semifinalist in the Moondance Film and Theatre Festival, and his book, The Three Gifts, has won the Editor’s Choice Award.
“That’s just about the most amazing thing ever!” he said.
This buffet lunch was the last part of our scouting high adventure. As we had planned the week, the boys made one request that was out of the norm from other high adventures I had been on. They had asked to eat out at some restaurants. The boys and leaders had worked hard on fundraising, putting flags at every home in our community on all of the main holidays. People who could afford to donate had been generous. So, amidst all of the boating, fishing, and camping, we ate at a Mongolian grill, a restaurant famous for its big pancakes, and ended the week at the all-you-can-eat buffet.
While I was paying for our entrance into the buffet, Jason was busy checking out the chocolate fountain. By the time I joined everyone at our table, he had a plate full of chocolate covered marshmallows and strawberries. He set it in front of me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“I did these for you,” he replied.
“Why didn’t you do them for yourself?”
“You know my parents don’t want me to eat sugar,” he said.
It was true that he avoided sugar, except for chocolate milk. Even so, he still had more energy than any boy I knew. I wondered what he would be like if he did eat sugar.
“They do look good,” I said. “But I better eat other food first, or my blood sugar will spike.”
I got a plate of salad and some roast and potatoes. When I finished that, I ate the chocolate-covered marshmallows and strawberries. I went back for shrimp and chicken and returned to find another plate of chocolate-covered strawberries. I didn’t even have to ask who had done it.
“Jason, what’s this?” I asked.
“It’s so much fun dipping them in the chocolate; I made you some more.”
I looked at my plate of food and the chocolate-covered strawberries, and I considered that I would need a bloat needle if I ate all of it.
“No more,” I said. “I might be able to eat these, but don’t you dare make me any more chocolate covered anything.”
I ate my shrimp and chicken and slowly made my way through chocolate covered strawberries. I had just finished the last one when Jason came back with an ice-cream cone with ice-cream about a foot high. He was carefully balancing it to keep it from falling. He held it out to me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“We’re having a contest to see who can make the highest cone. So far, I’m winning.”
I took it, but said, “No more, Jason. I mean it. I’m going to be sick now.”
I hate to see food go to waste, so I slowly ate it. I had just reached the bottom and knew I couldn’t even look at another food item when I saw Jason filling another ice cream cone. I went over to him.
“Who’s that for?” I asked.
“You,” he replied. “Someone beat my record, so I have to go higher.”
“I am not eating it!” I said. “You make it; you eat it!”
“But I don’t eat sugar,” he replied.
“You eat chocolate milk, and ice cream is just frozen chocolate milk, so it’s yours,” I replied.
He grinned and nodded. He piled that one higher than the one he made for me, and he ate it. He then made another one even higher and ate it, too.
And when we headed home, I realized I had made a big mistake telling him to eat the ice cream. We had to ride home with him, and his energy turned nuclear. By the time we got home, I was not only sick, I was going crazy. It’s no wonder his parents didn’t want him eating sugar.
I was around camp most of the morning and saw nothing unusual, but, when everyone returned for lunch, Gordy’s painted candies were missing. He demanded everyone show him their hands, but the only person with any paint on himself was Gordy from his sloppy paint job. He couldn’t try this technique again since everyone now knew what he had done. But it didn’t matter to him, because, in his mind, everyone was guilty, and he wasn’t reluctant about saying so.
“Okay, Gordy,” I said, “calm down, and let’s try to analyze this.”
“That’s stupid,” he replied. “Just because you’re a math professor doesn’t mean you can solve something like this by logic.”
“No,” I said, “but sometimes the answers are different from what a person may think. And, often, they are right in front of a person’s face.”
“And if it is Gordy’s face,” Devin said, “then it could be a really ugly answer.”
“Ha, ha,” Gordy replied. “Thousands of comedians out of work and I get stuck with you.”
“Let’s consider some things,” I said. “Gordy, did you zip your tent shut when you left?”
“Of course.”
“Was it still shut when you came back?”
“Almost,” he replied. “The zipper was up about four or five inches.”
“Was it the same way last time when you lost the Oreo?”
“Yes.”
“If a thief wanted to remain unsuspected,” I said, “I’m sure that he would have tried to leave things exactly the same.”
“So why only leave it up four to five inches?” Tanner asked.
I thought about it for a minute as the whole troop stared at me, acting like I was going to get some kind of revelation or something. And then, suddenly, I did get one. I smiled as the answer began to come to me. “Maybe it was up only four or five inches because that was all the thief needed,” I said.
“That’s stupid,” Gordy said. “Obviously he couldn’t crawl in that hole. And I put the candy at the far back of the tent so he couldn’t reach his arm in and grab it.”
I smiled, and that seemed to build the suspense and curiosity for everyone. “Gordy, were there any other signs or anything?” I asked.
“Well, the thief dripped a little paint in the tent,” Gordy replied.
Everyone followed as I went to look at the evidence. Upon inspection, I shook my head. “That’s not dripped paint.”
“What is it?” Mort asked.
Instead of answering, I scanned the trees. The boys looked up, trying to see what I was looking for. Finally, I saw it. I smiled as I answered them. “It wasn’t dripped paint; it was footprints.”
“Footprints?” Gordy questioned.
I had seen a squirrel often watching us. But now, its paws and whole underbelly were red. I pointed at it. “There’s your thief.”
Gordy looked up and saw the red paint on the squirrel. He walked over to the tree, and sure enough, the ground was littered with candy wrappers. He shook his fist at it. “You dirty little thief!”
The squirrel shook his fist back and shouted “Chi, chi, chi!”
“You little beggar!” Gordy yelled. He picked up a stick and threw it up at the squirrel. The stick came right back and hit Gordy on his foot. He started jumping around and hollering.
“Squirrel 10, Gordy 0,” Devin said.
And, thus, was solved the case of the scout camp bandit.
During this time of year, in the west, we are often faced with dry conditions leading to major wildfires. This year, here in Idaho, we had an extremely wet spring. That is great for getting the crops off to a good start. But toward the middle to the end of June, the weather turned hot and dry. We haven’t had a good rain for a month or more.
The problem with this is that the heavy spring rains also made the grass and shrubbery proliferate. But then when the rains quit, and the sun heated everything, the grass and shrubs dried and became tinder for a fire. It made for a dangerous situation. Add to that dry lightning storms, lightning strikes with no rain to quell the sparks, and the fire season turned explosive.
The dry rangeland to the north of us, thousands of acres of sagebrush and prairie grass, was in this exact situation. Fires started, presumably from some dry lightning strikes. Soon the fire was burning at high speed across the range. The fire crews rushed to save a small town that was in the fire’s path. However, they didn’t have resources to try to save the cattle that grazed this land.
This is where the wonderful part of the story comes together. The ranchers, farmers, and anyone else who could, rushed to help those in need. People who work the land are often independent and determined to take care of their own needs, but what nature was throwing at them was more than anyone could face on their own.
Everyone involved came together and made a plan. It was determined what land would be most defensible. All cattle would be driven there and fenced in together. The concern of separating whose animals were whose would have to be dealt with later. While horse riders set out to bring in all of the cattle that could be found, farmers took tractors and disks and harrowed the perimeter of the area where the cattle would be detained, determined to make a stand against the fire. By the time the cattle were rounded up and brought to the protected pastures, a large amount of soil had been turned to cover anything that would burn.
The fire came and burned through, sweeping everything in its path, but it could not cross the harrowed fields. The smoke was heavy and caused the sun to glow red if it showed at all. Farmers with tractors also helped the firefighters, harrowing to create fire breaks around towns and homes in the path of the fire. For a week it was hard to breathe as the fire burned, but when it was finally brought under control, the damage was minimal compared to what it could have been.
This valley is known for the early settlers coming into an arid, inhospitable land, and working together to dig canals that would bring life-saving water to the crops. To survive, neighbor helped neighbor. No single man could do it alone, and when the work was finished, everyone benefitted as the water flowed to all.
The people of this valley showed themselves to be worthy descendants of those early settlers. Even those whose land and homes were in well-irrigated areas and were not threatened by the fire, worked as if their own land were at stake. And everyone who was not needed on the front lines worked as support. It was a wonderful story of community teamwork.
And when all is said and done, there are few stories worth retelling, but this one of community teamwork is one of them.
Underhand fast-pitch softball was big in the communities before World War II, and Dean was a crazy fast pitcher at it, with an emphasis on crazy. His pitches were incredibly fast, but they were also all over the place. He and some of his brothers would play every chance they could, even when they should be home working.
Dean’s mother had grown weary of it all. More than once she had to dispatch one of her daughters to fetch Dean and his brothers from the ball diamond long after they were supposed to be home. She had learned it did no good to send another brother because they would just end up playing, too.
Then the war came, and Dean and his brothers were drafted into the army. Dean soon found himself in Europe. When there were breaks in fighting and all the other things that went along with war, the men would organize softball teams. Dean had a lot of chances to play, and he enhanced his control, and his skill became well known.
Once he came home from the war, there wasn’t a lot of time to play ball. It was time to find work and get on with life. He still played when he could, but the work that was to be had with farm labor skills was not necessarily high paying and meant lots of extra hours to make a living.
Some big construction jobs started, and the jobs paid well, but the competition was fierce. One big construction firm was building a large commercial lodge at Jackson Lake. They decided that it would be good promotion for the company and the lodge to form a fast-pitch softball team among their workers. But in their first game, they were trounced soundly by a local team.
Those managing the construction crew didn’t feel it looked good for their team to be beaten, and especially not as badly as they were. They started searching around for better players, and Dean’s name came up. A company representative traveled over one-hundred miles from the construction site to St. Anthony, Idaho. When Dean was offered a construction job at a much higher wage than what he received where he was currently working, he jumped at the chance.
In the next game, Dean, pitching for the construction crew team, struck out many of their opponents, but there were still holes in his team. In the times the ball was hit, Dean watched too many misses by the shortstop. Dean went to the office to see the construction foreman.
“We needed a good shortstop if we are going to have a really good team.”
“Do you know one?” the foreman asked.
“My brother, Glen.”
“Has he worked construction before?” the foreman asked.
“Not any more than I have,” Dean answered.
The foreman turned to the administrative person in the office. “Hire his brother.”
Glen was hired, and the team did well. Dean and Glen were also learning construction. But the catcher couldn’t hold on to some of the pitches that Dean threw at him.
The foreman pulled Glen aside. “Can you catch the pitches your brother throws?”
“I can if I am the one that tells him what to throw,” Glen answered.
“You work that out with him, then,” the foreman said.
The team started doing better, but they came close to losing a couple of times. They were coming up against some even tougher teams, and a competitor company sponsored one of them. The foreman watched the team and realized that some of his players were good at construction, but they were only mediocre at softball. This time he went to Dean.
“Do you know any others that are good at softball?” he asked.
“I have other brothers and cousins,” Dean replied.
And that’s how Dean’s mother came to admit that softball might have a place after all.
Our community is rural, and talk among the men soon turned to crops and cattle. From there it turned to milk cows and how much time they took. At one point, Doug, one of the men there, turned to me.
“Daris, didn’t you grow up on a dairy farm?” he asked.
“I sure did,” I replied. “And I had milk cows until recently. How about you?”
“I had one once,” Doug replied. “It actually came in quite useful.”
He then told me the story. He said that on the Saturday he got off of his honeymoon, his father-in-law showed up. He was driving a truck with a single cow in the back.
“This cow is yours, Doug,” the father-in-law said. “I’m giving her to you as a dowry for my daughter.”
Doug thought that was a down-right gentlemanly thing to do. He graciously accepted the cow. But Doug began to wonder when he saw the grin on his father-in-law’s face.
Doug locked the cow in the old barn and fed her. That evening, he milked her. She was gentle, and there seemed to be no problem, so Doug just passed off his father-in-law’s grin as friendliness.
The next morning, Doug had an early morning meeting at the church. He decided to go to it, and then come home to milk. When he returned from the meeting, he was in for a surprise. The cow had busted her way out of the barn, and that is not figuratively. She truly busted down part of a wall.
Doug drove up and down the road, and finally found the cow about a mile away, mowing his neighbor’s yard. The neighbor was not too keen on the free mowing job, and even less so about the free fertilizer the cow left on his doorstep.
Doug finally got a rope on the cow, and the minute he did, she took off down the road at full speed with Doug in tow. It was embarrassing enough to be flying down the road like a kite, but the cow had to make sure she looped through everyone’s yard so they all would see Doug as a human ballast on the end of the rope. The cow dragged Doug right past his house and finally came to a stop in a deep ditch. She then turned to sneer at him, and Doug was sure she was asking him what he planned to do about it.
Doug finally got the cow home and milked her. He was late for church, and found his predicament and morning run was the talk of the community.
That night when Doug went out to milk the cow, all was well. But the next morning he found she had busted another hole in the barn wall and was gone again. Doug was so mad he could hardly speak. He was sure his father-in-law had given him the cow because he knew she would do this. He went in to ask his wife.
“The stupid cow is out again,” Doug said.
“Oh, you mean, Lucy?” she replied. “You know she got her name because she was always on the loose-ee.”
Doug’s wife laughed, but Doug didn’t think it was funny.
“But I did find a good use for the cow,” Doug said to me.
“What was that?” I asked.
“The next day was the auction, and I found out that a cow sold for just enough money to buy a newly married couple a nice television,” Doug said. “And that was the only useful purpose I have ever found for a milk cow.”
One little girl raised her hand. “Yes,” she said. “She’s smiling.”
“Yes, she is smiling,” the teacher replied. “But, can you see anything else that makes her different from you?”
The children looked and looked and strained to see a difference. Finally, another little girl raised her hand. When the teacher called on her, she said, “She’s dressed in summer clothes instead of big, thick winter clothes.” No matter how long the teacher asked them about the difference, the children could not see anything of importance.
I smiled as I thought of an experience with my own little daughter, Elliana. When she was five years old, she was invited over to play at the home of a family that was new to the area. The mother, father, and their four biological children were all Caucasian, blue-eyed and very blond. They also had a sweet little African American daughter that they had adopted.
My wife, Donna, had grown up in Los Angeles and had lots of friends from other races and nationalities. I lived in New York for a time and grew to love people from almost every religion and region of the world. But our children had not had any such opportunities. The culture here in Idaho is not very diverse. Donna was concerned that our daughter might be surprised at the mix in the family, and innocently say something she should not. So, she simply told her that one child in the family was adopted.
“What does ’dopted mean?” Elliana asked.
“Well, when a child is adopted into a family, they are not born to the mother of that family, but to another mother,” Donna replied. “But if that child’s mother can’t take care of them, the other family takes the child into their home and loves them as their own.”
This was not really a new concept to Elliana, as we had been foster parents before, so she smiled and said, “That is so nice.”
Elliana went over there and played most of the day. There were four girls and one boy in the family. The girls played dolls with Elliana and did lots of girl things, but when they all played soccer in the backyard, the little boy joined them. They had lunch, and cake for dessert and all sorts of good things.
When Elliana arrived home, we asked her how it went. “It was the most fun ever,” she said. “They have really pretty dolls, and we played soccer in their great, big yard.”
Then Elliana stopped and looked at her mother. “Momma, which one in their family was ’dopted?”
“Well, did you notice that one child was a bit different from the others?” Donna asked.
Elliana thought for a moment, and then she smiled. “Oh, yes, there was one that was different.”
“And what was the difference?” Donna asked.
Donna hoped to make this a teaching moment, sharing with our daughter about how wonderfully diverse people are. But, instead, we were the ones that learned. We learned that children aren’t born with ideas of differences, but it is something we build in our hearts as we grow older.
For, in answer to the question, Elliana just laughed and said, “It’s obvious, Momma. One was a boy.”