Just Another Day At Target

This is a throwback post from December 7, 2016. I decided to repost it, because it is just as relevant today, if not more, that it was then.

I meet quite a few interesting people.  I must be a magnet or where a sign that says come talk to me, but I welcome it so I won’t complain.

During the Thanksgiving holiday I was shopping with family and my daughter was with us.  A gentleman stopped me and asked if she had been good this year.  Now even though we have taught our kids from day one that Santa is fiction, I went along with it.   He then turns to her and asks “Do you know who I am?  I am one of Santa’s helpers and I am extremely old, 82 to be exact so you should believe me.”  She gets all excited and is smiling and nodding.  This is where things take an expected turn for all of us.

He then continues, “You have a beautiful complexion and color of your skin.  If anyone ever tells you anything different, don’t believe them and ignore them.  And if they give you any trouble, tell them they can take it up with the old guy that knows Santa.”  She is gleaming by this point.

Then he proceeds to tell the rest of us a story.  He has a daughter and one day his daughter calls him and says “Dad, I think I want to adopt this little girl but I don’t know how you would feel about it.”  He responded to her, “I am going to tell you exactly what your grandma would tell you.  Take two bowls and fill them with water.  Put brown sugar in one bowl and white sugar in the other.  Mix them up really well.  Now stick your finger in the first bowl and taste it.  Now stick your finger in the second bowl and taste it.  I guarantee you, they will both just be sweet.  Go adopt that baby.”   He then showed us a picture of his granddaughter (like any proud grandpa) who was a beautiful tan complexion a lot like my daughter.  She is graduating at the top of her class this coming June and has colleges offering her money left and right.

He then looks at me and says to my daughter, “Do you know what those spots on your mother’s face are?  Little specks of brown sugar.”   We then say our Merry Christmases and thank him for sharing with us.

I think in a time like we live in right now, this conversation was so important and relevant.  It gives hope that no matter what we look like on the outside, there are good people all around.  And we can not cast a broad net when it comes to any type of group.  The old adage “never judge a book by it’s cover” is so true.  Yet, with social media, constant news coverage, police shootings, hate speech, divisiveness among political parties, cultural divides, racial divides, economic divides…the list goes on and on, we tend to cast multiple broad nets and miss out on the blessings of being able to hear the story of other genuinely good-hearted people.

I don’t know if my daughter will remember Santa’s helper 5,10, 15 years from now but I do know he has etched a place in my permanent memory.  And periodically I will bring it up to her, just so she can remember that someone not like her recognized her beauty and those are the people we need to surround ourselves with daily.

Until next time…make a difference and be extra ordinary.