The Gift of Fun

My daughter is in 2nd grade. Her school gave her a nice looking T-shirt with the school logo on it and a bunch of sponsors on the back. She was very proud of this shirt. Her sweet and delightful way of invitng me into her excitement over the shirt was great. There was no way I was going to be allowed to give her a mere "yeah, that's nice." No, this shirt deserved much more than that.

So, she asked me to name her shirt.

"Name your shirt? You mean like, Sherrie or Bob?" I asked.

"No. A made up name."

"Ah, right, let's see. How about Gerfiffle?"

She asked me how to spell it and wrote it down.

"OK, I need another name."

"Why?"

"I am getting names from everyon in the family and then I will decide what to name the shirt."

"Right, uhmmmm, How about Shamma-lamma?"

"How do you spell that?"

I spelled it for her.

"Thanks dad," she said and went to find her brother.

She got some names from her kindergarten aged brother and her mother. Then she came back to me and asked of all of the names given which two did I like the best?

"Hmmm, I like Tukey and Sherdy."

"OK, thanks, I really need to think about it."

I went outside to mow the badly neglected lawn. After a few minites of mowing the back yard I heard the familiar yelling, "Daaaaaad!" My kids always have something important to say during the mowing of the lawn.

"Dad," she said with her brother standing right next to her, "the name of the shirt is Sherdy."

"Hey, that was your brother's idea." My son beamed. My daugter beamed.

I turned to walk back to the lawn mower, but stopped. Something had captured my mind in that moment.

"You know what?" I asked.

"What?" she asked back.

"You gave us fun. Thanks for giving the whole family the gift of fun."

You should have seen the look on her face. It looked like she realized that she had this incredible power that she never knew about, and the power was good. She put fun into the family. Oh, it was one of those very special moments.