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Come with me to a third grade classroom.
There is a nine-year-old
kid sitting at his desk and, all of a sudden, there is a puddle between
his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is
going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has
happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the
boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out,
they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.
The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down
and prays this prayer : "Dear God, this is an emergency ! I need help
now ! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat."
He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look
in her eyes that says he has been discovered. As the teacher is
walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish
bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and
inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap.
The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself,
"Thank you, Lord ! Thank you, Lord !"
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is
the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and
gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other
children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk.
The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that
should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie.
She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. "You've done enough,
you klutz !"
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy
walks over to Susie and whispers, "You did that on purpose, didn't
you ?" Susie whispers back, "I wet my pants once too."
May God help us see the opportunities that are always around us to
do good.
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