Lesson From Storytime

The past week or two has been exhausting and busy.  So busy, in fact, that time to read has been really limited.  While I have no lesson from a book to share this week, I do have a lesson that I learned in storytime.

Wednesday morning, I was expecting a group of 50 to 60 people for library storytime.  I was exhausted, to say the least.  Sleep had been eluding me for several days.  My eyes were bloodshot and I had even deeper, darker circles under my eyes that usual.  As I prepared for the energetic group of toddlers and preschoolers, I wondered what the caregivers were going to think of me and my haggard looks.  Never the less, as the crowd poured in, my energy rose.  We had so much fun.  I delighted in seeing  the young children dance with their colorful scarves as I blew bubbles for them to pop, hearing them shriek with glee.

 

Then, as the children walked up to me to put their scarves away, a child of just about 4 years old came up and said to me, “You’re pretty!”  

That was my lesson for the day, or even for the year.  In the eyes of a child, pretty has nothing to do with how we look.  Pretty is how we act and how we smile and how we laugh.  Pretty is how we make other people feel.  And I made that little boy smile and laugh, so therefore I was pretty to him. 

 

My sisters and I have a joke argument going.  Who is the smart one, who is the nice one and who is the pretty one?  I’d like to think that according to my new definition of pretty, we are all the pretty ones.