It's The Little Things In Life...

Let me just go on record right now and say that I am very easily amused.

Background for my story:
Through work, I volunteer by reading to preschool kids once a month. It isn't always easy to keep the 3 -4 year olds entertained with Goodnight Moon or The Cat In The Hat (and let me tell you from experience that if you try to read a Curious George book to a preschooler whose primary language spoken at home is Spanish, then you're in for a very long, uncomfortable five to ten minutes), but they are such a ginormous bundle of cute that I can hardly stand it. Adorably cute to me, I'm sure, because I only have to be there for about 30 minutes. But when they all yell "Hello Miss!" when I come in and act genuinely happy to see me, well then, I just melt.

When I'm at work, I park in the garage that is attached to the Dallas Symphony Center.

On to the story...
I was leaving the garage the other day to go read to the kids. Unbeknownst to me, some of the area schools were having field trips to the symphony, so once I was on the ramp going out, I ran into a couple of cops directing buses around the entrance. Naturally, I had to stop and wait and this put my car right at the level of a walkway filled with kids about third grade age. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see them frantically waving at me, so I turn and give them my best pageant contestant wave. They start getting excited and I can see them saying, "She waved!" to each other. Pretty soon I can see one kid doing the international "honk your horn" gesture. (The one we used to give truckers on the highway when we were kids). I turn to them and shake my head with a big "NOOOOO" but now all the other kids have started to chant, "HONK YOUR HORN! HONK YOUR HORN!"

Normally, I don't have any problem playing along with these kinds of things, but I was directly in front of about four of Dallas' finest and I really didn't want a ticket. I started shaking my head, but the chanting just got louder. "HONK YOUR HORN! HONK YOUR HORN!" Well, what was I going to do about that? As the cop in front of me finally motioned me out into traffic, I gave the horn a couple of short beeps and the kids went bonkers. They started jumping up and down, high fiving each other and pumping their little fists in the air. It was fantastic. You'd have thought that I was Oprah giving away cars based on their excitement level.

I giggled all the way to the school and then when the kids all greeted me and started inching close to my chair while I was reading, I felt like the coolest person on the planet. (Or at least like Sally Field at the Oscars years ago. "You like me. You really like me.")

I grinned like an idiot the rest of the day. Nothing bad could touch me--not idiotic requests, not bad drivers, nothing. If we could all keep a real cheering section handy, I guarantee the world would be a much happier place.