A story about the bond formed between a little 5 year old girl and some construction workers that makes you believe that we CAN make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time.
A young family moved into a house, next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot.
The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers. The young mother welcome the diversion, giving her more time to work around the house instead of chasing after her daughter. Eventually the construction crew, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and bought her soft drinks and other goodies, gave her little jobs to do here, and there, to make her feel important and part of the construction crew.
At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a couple of dollars. The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the two dollar "pay" she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account.
When they got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, "I worked last week with the crew building the house next door to us."
My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working on the house again this week, too ?"
The little girl replied, "I will if those sons of bi--hes at Home Depot ever deliver the dam- sheet rock..."
Kind of brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?
A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to the bar and announces: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."