Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Learning from Cooper


My buddy, Cooper, celebrated his fourth birthday not long ago.
I really like Cooper.
For the last couple years I have been paying a great deal of attention to his behavior.  Cooper is a people person.  More importantly, I like how he interacts with everyone.  Says exactly what he is thinking.  Not afraid to look you in the eye.  Knows what is his.  Knows what is yours.
I have always been fascinated by the bare honesty an innocence of kids.  Cooper has that.
A while back, I was visiting Cooper and his parents down at the lake.  Cooper’s dad, Tad, was fishing from shore.  As we all sat there chatting, two men in a small fishing boat trolled along the lake in front of us.  The boat was easily within our casting distance.  A certain tension always exists between fishermen on the shore and those in boats.  Those of us on shore normally grumble when a boat sputters by, especially when the boat is close.
Tad and one of the men in the boat exchanged a few strained pleasantries—a “how’s the fishin” sort of thing.  Almost immediately after that, Cooper yelled out to the fishermen: “Love you!”
Well, that’s not something I would have yelled out, but it certainly eased any previous tension. 
Lesson learned.
--Mitchell Hegman

1 comment:

  1. Funny how "I love you" is both an abused and underused statement. The world would probably be better off if we use "I love you" in a way an innocent four-year old would.

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