Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Spelling Bee

Woo! Hoo! Talk about forgiveness opportunities you didn't see coming! George (my son) was in the spelling bee yesterday. He took ninth, by the way, out of thirty-four kids.

A crazy thing seemed to happen up on that stage. There were three rows of seats, a front, middle and back row. Each time one kid would stand up and take a turn at the microphone all the seated kids would shift over a seat...except the kid sitting just to the left of my kid. She kept keeping an extra chair between herself and George.

No other kids had an empty chair in between them. It really started to seem like she thought George had cooties or something. I watched him really closely to see if he seemed to notice, and he did! I could tell that he noticed, and I swear I saw the hurt in his eyes.

This went on for what seemed like forever. I got angrier and angrier each time the kids shifted, and there was that empty chair. It was so obvious that she refused to sit right next to George! Oh, I wanted to march right up on that stage and straighten her out or mangle her up or something.

Then Georgie got his word, "hurriedly", and he missed it, so he came down to the audience and sat. And the kids shifted up on stage, and that girl kept a seat in between her and the new next kid. And then her and the new next kid. And again. Turns out it wasn't personal. She just likes an extra seat no matter who is sitting to her right. And George could see that as plain as anyone.

So then, finally, I forgave it, and I felt extremely grateful to be so very wrong about everything all the time.

2 comments:

  1. I can't think what to say except what a clear example of something appearing to be as it is not as everything is....

    ReplyDelete