Big Cats Chase Small Birds and Big Birds Chase Small Cats

I tend to gravitate toward children when attending any kind of gathering of families.

I have my reasons.

For one thing, if you want to hear true stories and accuracy in descriptions, you need to confer with children.  Children share emotions openly and honestly.  Children are still fully attached to their imagination.

Yesterday, at the graduation ceremony and luncheon for the trade school where I am employed, I managed to engage in conversation with several boys and girls aged ten and under.  My habit is to treat children as adults and make them feel as though they are the most important people in the room.

I engaged in one very good conversation about rain and mud puddles with one young gentleman.  He liked rain only a little but liked puddles quite a lot.

I also spoke at length to a tiny girl who needed to show me her “done-up” hair and painted fingernails and flowered dress and—oh, yes—this was her daddy!  “Hey, I know him!” I told her, much to her delight.

Another young man wanted to hold the microphone so he could talk and only pretend that everyone heard him.  “I can turn that on, if you wish, I said.

“Oh, no.” he said, backing away from the lectern and microphone stand.

At the end of the celebration, as various groups gathered to talk in the lobby of the Colonial Red Lion Inn, where the graduations was held, I chatted with one of the recent graduates, his wife and four children.  At one point, I turned to one of the boys (aged at something near eight) and asked with calm seriousness.  “So, are you driving everyone home?”

“No,” he answered with a crooked grin.”  He quickly looked over to his father to see the reaction of his father.

“He would love to try,” his father assured me.

“Hmmm…you look like you might be a pretty good driver to me.”

At the end of my long day, I drove home and immediately contacted Ariel for an online chat.  At some point, she asked what “gold nugget” moments I experienced during the day.  I readily responded that I was able to speak with a bunch of children during the graduation luncheon.

Not much tops that.

Children understand that big cats chase small birds and big birds chase small cats.

Often, that is what matters most.

--Mitchell Hegman