There is always one that warms your heart.
******
He stumbled trying to get his thought formed into proper English. As well as project his "second" language for its correctness.
"You got to need paper moneys to go up there or you got to have in your account?"
"Do you want buy something ****?"
He repeated himself again in his jumbled form about the understanding of how purchasing something from the snack rack works.
"**** do you have money in your account?" Knowing fully well when I said that he did not.
"Me got money, here." And he pulled a child's wallet from his front pocket, handed it to me, then continued rummaging around in his pocket. The wallet basically empty, except for a few coins floating loosely in the dollar bill section. He then handed me other coins he gathered from his pocket. Six coins in total.
"How much do you have?"
"Me got"
"No **** it's I've got"
"I got ninety and me want candy from the bottom"
"Let me see" I reached for the coins to count for myself. (The candy is actually fruit roll-ups.)
"**** you have sixty-two cents"
I took his small hand and we walked to the snack rack. Fruit roll-ups cost seventy-five cents, so I checked the balance in my own lunch account and there was plenty in there to buy lots of fruit roll-ups. So knowing this little guy who warms my heart last had a snack when I purchased him an ice cream at Christmas, got his fruit roll-up. Then I tucked his sixty-two cents back in the zippered coin section of the little pleather wallet and handed it back to him.
"What about moneys?"
"**** don't worry about the money, just enjoy the fruit roll-up, but eat your turkey sandwich all gone first."
Away he went to his seat.
The beauty of it all is ****'s 7 year old concept of money, like his English, isn't fully grasped enough to realize why he got to keep his money and still got that fruit roll-up. Just like at Christmas he never questioned how and why he got an ice cream on that cold December afternoon.
His innocence is the insulator of my heart. And that, that's what warms my heart.
Sometimes the best things served in the school cafeteria isn't Monday's chicken nuggets. It's the fruit roll-ups.
3 comments:
Oh, sweet story, Jodi! I just loved this today--you wrote it so lovely. It reminded me of all those years I helped out at the school--all those little ones who didn't get the extras in life, but who I could "treat" every once in awhile. So innocent when they are young, I hated to see them later, a little more jaded from the reality of their lives.
Thanks for the smile and the great story.
Sometimes Lin, there are few in this world that remain unjaded. I think **** may be one of those. His vest for life and his family's values, though not wealthy by the banks standards, are quite rich. I guess I will have to sit back and see.
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