If ever I needed proof that I am indeed, a small-town farm girl at heart, it came yesterday, while Christmas shopping.
I am not cut out to be in that small of a space with that many people packed into it. I swear to God, all 1 million people who live in the city of Calgary were at the mall I chose to shop at yesterday. I lasted a whole hour and then I went home.
I grew up on a farm near a town of 1500 people. My nearest neighbour was at least two miles away. There were 30 kids in my entire class until high school, when the rest of the kids from the even smaller schools around the county had to come to our school. That put the grand total up to 60 kids in my graduating class.
I am not happy with crowds. I am not happy in traffic. I would never, EVER be able to live in the city. Okay, technically, Airdrie is a city, but there are only 30,000 people living here. And to be honest with you, this is about as big a city as I can take. To me, cities are fun places to drive to for a day every once in awhile to do some shopping and maybe go to a movie or a play, and then get the hell out of and go home.
Anyway, back to my original point, there were A LOT of people at the mall yesterday. I don't know what I was thinking going shopping in Calgary on a Saturday, but I've learned my lesson.
Oh, but there was one very bright spot in my day.
I stopped at Wal-Mart here in Airdrie to get some wrapping paper and bows and tape and all that good stuff, and stupidly didn't get a cart. I thought that since I was only picking up a few things I could carry them and get through the crowd easier than if I had a cart. But of course, I found a few other things I needed while I was there, and pretty soon I was having trouble holding all the stuff I had stacked up in my arms and I dropped my rolls of tape. I was trying to figure out how my big fat pregnant self was going to bend down and pick up the tape without losing everything else when I heard this little voice say "I'll help you!" I looked up and a maybe 4-year-old boy was running down the aisle towards me. He picked it up for me with a big smile on his face and said "Here you go!" I tell you, I nearly cried. It was just the sweetest thing ever! I thanked him lots and told him what a nice thing it was for him to do, and he just looked pleased as punch that he'd done such a good thing for someone.
I sure hope I can raise a child who is as sweet and polite as that little guy.
Anyway, gotta go. Today is the day -- I'm going to haul the Christmas tree out of my basement and make my house look all festive. Merry Christmas!!!
3 comments:
Aw that is so sweet, kudos to parents with such an awesome little guy. Put up our tree today and ahhhhh it is heaven I tell ya.
Aawwww! That is just way too adorable. Some kids can just blow you away with their manners and helpfulness.
I agree with you a hundred percent on the big city thing. I could not imagine trying to shop on a saturday in calgary this close to christmas. Kudos to you for even trying!
That post reminded me of a sad, yet very "sweetly similar" story. In November of last year I suffered a miscarriage very early in a pregnancy (I have since gone on to have a successful pregnancy and now have a 3 month old bouncing baby boy!). The "incident" started at home just after I had put my daughter to bed. Being the Mom that always puts her kids first, I really didn't want to drag my poor daughter out of her warm bed to trudge to the ED for me. We didn't have anyone who lived close enough to baby-sit on short notice, so i told hubby to stay with daughter and I drove myself to the emergency room.
It really sucked having to go trough that on my own and as I was sitting in the waiting room of the ED, I was pretty upset and having some pretty bad abdominal pain, so naturally I was crying. I looked up to see a boy about the same age as your little helper (I guessed him to be about 4), who walked over to the table where the tissues were, plucked a few out, and brought them over to me to dry my tears. It was one of the most thoughful and touching things anyone had ever done for me and it just shows us the greatness of youth.
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