Working the System

Witnessing true gratitude can be as good as feeling it yourself. I didn't realize that until a few days ago, when I was at the bookstore where I work. We had a little event for kids, celebrating the launch of a new book, and a dozen or so children showed up. The mean age of those in attendance was around ten. The kids were a smart, lively bunch. We had several prizes to hand out, most of them little tokens for games of trivia about the book series. There were also two bigger prizes, a bright yellow t-shirt, and an autographed copy of the book, which the staff and I decided would be given away by luck of the draw, just to keep things completely fair.
One of the young boys collected a lot of the smaller prizes because he was really quick calling out the answers during trivia. He was as sweet as he was bright. When it came to playing for the two biggest prizes, we had narrowed the players down to that boy and a girl, because they had tied for accumulating the most points in the previous game. The winner for the t-shirt was to be selected by picking a number between 1 and 10. The young lad in question won by guessing the exact number, which happened to be lucky number 7. He was positively thrilled by his win and said thank you like someone who did so often. It was a pleasure to see.
The second of the "grand" prizes, the autographed book, was given away by drawing names from a hat. Sure enough, the same boy who had been cleaning up, by both wit and luck, won again. When he won yet again my first thought was that something strange was going on with this kid that day. I know statisticians and number crunchers would have had a logical, scientific explanation, claiming that the odds weren't really that great against him winning both prizes. I wasn't using my reasoning faculties, however, when I reacted in my typical now isn't that weird? fashion. I turned to the boy's mother and said something to that effect. Well wouldn't you know, she replied in my language. "He's been lucky all day," she said, "ever since he got up this morning he seems to have been in tune with the cosmos. There's some kind of cosmic connection, for sure." Her words were music to my ears.
This little incident already intrigued me, but what made it even more special was the boy's reaction to his streak of good luck. He wasn't just happy, he was deeply grateful. First he hugged himself with glee, and then proceeded to hug me and two of my colleagues who helped facilitate the event. I've worked with enough children at the store to know that he reacted in a spontaneous and more deeply felt way than most children his age would have done. It wasn't just a case a good manners. This kid's extraordinary, contagious expression of gratitude was genuinely moving. His mother clearly understood that we're all connected in some small way, and although she's probably never spoken about it to him in exactly those terms, he had obviously learned the lesson. He has a good mother, and it shows. His good fortune didn't just make him happy, or his mother proud, it also lifted the spirits of people who didn't even know him.
That beautiful young boy is off to a good start. As he goes through life, it won't always be easy, and it won't always be good, but this kid has a solid foundation for dealing with whatever crosses his path with fortitude, grace and wit. Bon voyage, young man.