By: Donna Hale Chandler
I think I have mentioned already that my daughter was a Little Chatterbox. She was the Champion Questioner. Some questions were innocent and would bring a smile to my face. Some questions were more likely to bring about a life threatening stroke.
One cold, snowy, winter day in Michigan, we were hurrying into the grocery store. The wind was wicked, we had to park in the ‘lower 40’ of the store parking lot, and I had a death grip on Heather’s hand. As I practically dragged her little 5 year-old body along past all the empty handicapped parking spaces, she suddenly planted her feet and came to a dead stop asking, “Mommy, why didn’t we park here? It’s a lot closer.”
“Because it’s a handicap space,” I said and with an even firmer grip, urged her on, trying to quicken the pace.
Once we were finally inside the warm walls of the grocery store and staring down the first aisle, Heather asked again about those empty parking spaces, “Tell me again Mommy. Why couldn’t we park in those closer spaces?”
“Because they’re handicap spaces, Heather.”
Then it came, the long drawn out, almost but not quite, whinny voice, “But Mommmmy,I don’t understand, what does a handicap car look like?”
That is a question that brought a smile, “It’s not the car that’s handicapped, Heather, it’s the person that drives the car. If the PERSON is handicapped they get to park closer so they don’t have to walk so far.”
To which, she shrugged her shoulders, and in an exasperated voiced said, “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place.”
Moral of the Story: Take the extra steps; leave the handicap spaces for those ‘handicapped cars’ that benefit from them — and of course teach your children to do the same.
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Gram use’ta say
“You’ll catch more flies with honey
than with vinegar.”
Am I The Only One 