I’ll stop looking for their halos now…

(If you read here, yesterday, feel free to skip this lengthy explanation.  Cause it’s the same.  Unless you would like to be astounded again today by my writing genius.  Your call…)

Here’s the thing.

I am lame.  I like to do lame things that make me feel good.  One of
those things is do something nice for people randomly and out of the
blue when I feel like they did something cool.

If I was rich, I would love to be the kind of person who was like
“You are awesome.  Here’s a new car.” 

But I am not, so it usually looks like this
“You are awesome.  Here’s a coffee/card/mug/baking”.

It’s almost as good as a new car.

And the truth is that it probably makes me more happy than the person(s)
that I give it to, because for whatever reason it makes me all warm and
fuzzy to point out to people that they rock.  So you can think I’m
really nice, but I’m mostly still being a little selfish.

I can spend a LOT of time focusing on why people suck.  And I think that
our society is quick to write letters of complaint about employees who
are incompetent or speak to the manager when we are mad about the
service, but when do we ever do the opposite – speak up when someone
does something great?  Hardly ever.  At least I don’t.

So I TRY to go out of my way and tell people that they are amazing that
day.  I say try because it was a conscious choice to try and do this a
few years ago and while it’s becoming habit, I’m not totally there yet. 
But I’m working on it.

So for the next while until Christmas, my goal is to find one person
doing something awesome every day, and do something kinda cool back.

And then bore you with the details.

______________


Yesterday afternoon I had to run into a Staff Meeting at my kid’s school to explain the Community Closet that I run and give the teachers the info they need to refer families in need.  No big deal.  10 minutes, in and out, the school is 5 minutes from my house and my kids brought some toys so they could wait in the office for me.


Well, right when I am walking in I can see that Monster has kicked his boots across the room and Freckles and Drama are already arguing about what they can and can’t do while they are there. 


Sigh.


Out of the corner of my eye, I see the custodian walking from down the hall.  The rest of the school is empty.  I have to go inside the meeting room now.  I take a fleeting look at my children hoping will somehow become angels for the next 10 minutes, and I close the door behind me.


When I walk out, there is no mess.  No noise.  The kids are playing nicely and Monster’s boots?  They are on the carpet where they should be.  Their mitts and hats are in their jackets. 
I am impressed.  Shocked, even.  In a Christmas miracle, they really DID become angels while I was in the next room. 

We get coats on and it’s not until the walk home that I learn it is not as it appears.

“Monster, where did you get that toy?”

Freckles then explains to me very nonchalantly that the custodian came in, gave him the toy from somewhere ( a little McDonald’s type figure) and set them up to play on a table.  I realize at this point that my children did not grow wings during my absence, the custodian must also have put their boots away and picked up their mitts to put in their jacket sleeves as they are supposed to. 

I don’t know much about the custodial staff at my kid’s school.

I do know that now that I think of it, this custodian is pretty awesome.  He clearly loves kids.  He’s good at his job.

I also happen to know he took fine arts in College.  He is very talented.  Every new holiday or season, if you happen to peek into the custodial office, you will see a new drawing in chalk on the little board in there.  You wouldn’t see them if you didn’t look, and how many people look in there?  It almost seems like a hidden little gem for the few who look in.  I peek in that office every time I’m in the school.

I’m guessing (and could be wrong) that if he studied art in school, this gentleman had other plans at one time for his career. 

I can so relate to that.

But he’s great at what he does, from what I can tell.  And in little things like taking time to help abandoned kids in the office well after school is done so their mom doesn’t ground them all for life when she opens the door again?

Well, that shows that regardless of whether or not this was the career he had been planning from the beginning, he is giving it his all.  He is going over and above. 

He is clearly awesome. 

So after the kid’s concert today, I *may* have snuck into his office and left a little envelope on his desk with a little something in it to thank him for going ahead and being awesome.

And while I was in there, I also snuck a picture of his chalkboard.  I wanted to ask, but then I would have had to explain what I was doing and that kinda would have ruined it.  So I really hope he doesn’t mind. 

Enjoy it, it’s beautiful.

Christmas Blessing #2 – A Little Something for going over and above with the Little Things

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