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