Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Parker, you had an exceptionally blessed afternoon.

You and I went to the grocery store and had accumulated a number of items, one of which included a pumpkin for your auntie Shar Shar to carve. While waiting in line I noticed an elderly man behind us who only had two items. I asked him if he'd like to go ahead of us and he said "yes". He moved in front of our cart, and then turned to ask you if you were going to make a scary pumpkin or silly pumpkin this Halloween. You told the man you were going to make yours a Cubs player...Derrek Lee to be exact.

"A Cubs player!? You like the Cubs?"

"Yes! They're the best team." you replied.

"Well, let's see here...", the man turned to face us and his jacket came in to view. It was a Cubs jacket, and on the left side under the logo, it read the word STAFF. He reached in to his jacket pocket and took out seven Cubs stickers for you and gave them to you. "I used to work at Wrigley for years until my wife had a heart attack. I had to quit to take care of her. Whenever I find a Cubs fan, I like to give them something special...especially one's as polite as you who let me go in front of you in line".

"Thank You!"
you said. I echoed my thanks as well, and just talked baseball for a few moments with the man. I told him about our game that we went to, about your Cubs room, and about how we have to get rid of Bradley and Soriano.

"My wife is in the car, but I'm going to pull up and give you some Cubs coloring books and crayons I have left over from my time working as an usher there."

Sure enough, by the time we had paid for our groceries, the man was walking up to us with about 5 Cubs coloring books and boxes of crayons for you.

"This is the best day of my life Mom!
"

The man was touched that he had made you so happy, so he said "Tell you what..I only have about 4 more left, but I'm going to give you something else." He came back with a baseball. "On my last day of work, they let me go on the field and pick up a bucket of balls after batting practice. I'm not sure who hit this one, but here ya go. I love the Cubs, and I only give out this stuff to true fans. When you told me about the rain out game, I knew I wanted him to have something extra special. Put this in your Cubs room."

We couldn't thank him enough. When I say you were on cloud 9, I mean, you were flying higher than a kit. You were so grateful and excited. I wanted you to see the correlation of how us being kind to someone, led to you being blessed. We didn't let the man go ahead of us because of what he could give us..we were just trying to be nice...and that's how God works. He blesses us.

You were so nice to come home and give Kent several stickers and coloring books..passing on the kindness.

3 comments:

Amie said...

I just teared up reading this! Partially out of excitement for Parker, and out of how sweet this man is, but also thinking of how hard it must have been for him to quit his job there. Sounds like such a sweet old man.

mscottberg said...

great story!

Megan said...

This is so awesome!