The Pocket

A few years ago, a friend told me this story. She was having one of those hectic mornings where everything seems to fall apart, breaks in one's hands, and generally goes wrong. You know the kind. Reaching for your toothpaste, you knock over a glass, only to reach down and pick it up dropping your toothbrush in the process. You pick up the tooth brush and immediately drop it again...and again. Arrrgh!

Then as you are headed out the door, you realize that your nicely pressed, lightly starched, clean white shirt somehow transformed into a giant bib at breakfast, which you scarffed down because you were already running late! And now you'll have to wear a less obviously dirty shirt because you didn't finish laundry last night. You swear off of coffee and breakfast foods for the rest of your life and quickly change into the least smelly shirt you own, which doesn't quite go with the pants, but you don't have time to change those too!

Before you can even get out of the driveway, some pedestrian walking her dog stops in your driveway while Fluffy takes a dump on your lawn. And so you wait politely for them to get out of the way when you remember that the new highway construction project on your route is scheduled to begin this morning...

So...she was having one of those mornings! As she stepped into the small pre-school where she teaches Kindermusic, she was relating the horrors of her morning with another teacher when a small boy came up and began to tug on her less obviously dirty shirt. "Miss Eliz-beth! Miss Eliz-beth!!" he shouted excitedly, fairly bouncing out of his little shoes.

"Just a minute," she said as she continued her conversation with her colleague.

"But Miss Elizabeth! Guess what?!" he went on.

""Don't interrupt, please," she chided gently. Then turned back to finish her sentence.

"But Miss Elizabeth! Guess what!?", he just couldn't contain himself.

"What??!" she finally asked, seeing that he was about to burst.

He stuck his small hand in a decorative pocket on the front of his sweater and squealed, "I have pockets!"

She had to laugh! Pockets...that's all. Just pockets. He was beside himself with joy that HE had a pocket in which he could place his hand. He was proud and giddy...about pockets.

He proceeded to tell her all about how he could store stuff in them like paper clips and acorns.

It was exactly the wake-up call she needed to remind her to be grateful. No more energy wasted on recounting the ordeals of the morning, just gratitude for a simple thing like the pocket!

I don't know about you, but today, I will focus on the simple things for which I am grateful like air and water and puppy dogs and pockets...