[Puppet Guy]

Character is NOT dead!

Today I'm at my oldest's school doing some volunteer work - it's "fun lunch" day, so my job is taking food to the classrooms. I get to the final classroom and dropped off the last order, and one of the kids walks up to me and says "thanks for your work - this is for you" and he hands me a loonie - freakin' kids tips me! Naturally I don't want to take his money and tell him it's not necessary and he can keep it. Wrong answer - he says "no, you're awesome and you brought us food, keep it!". This goes on for about minute. I really don't want to take it, but the llttle guy isn't gonna take no for an answer. This is clearly important to the kid, so I bite the bullet, tell him he's an honorable and thoughtful little man for thinking of others like that - character is something you're born with, he's got it by the bucket load and it'll carry him far. Soon as I'm back at the office I hand the loonie to the staff (it became a school donation - happy to help him feel proud but I'm not keeping a kid's money!) and tell them about what just happened. About ten minutes later the kid is in the office with a scraped knee, so as he's getting patched up I let the staff know who the little man was and what he did. Soon as the bandaid is on they're giving him a certificate for being a thoughtful kid and telling him the same thing about how respectful he was. His reply was pretty simple and profound: "I just like making people happy".

This is a good kid who clearly has good parents. If this is the kid of a CP'er, I hope you're as proud of him as he was of himself.