The Nice Lady

You know I'm not talking about me.

A few weeks ago I made a last-ditch effort to inspire the kids to make their beds and keep their rooms clean--for a whole week.

Bribery.

The winner got a date with me to a destination of his or her choice.

Logan won hands-down and he chose the bookstore.

In our family the bookstore means Half-Priced-Books because we are too cheap to buy books at full-price (especially when you can check them out and return them (no storage!) for free to the library).

So we went and I gave him a $5 budget.

While he was agonizing over $25 worth of books a nice lady (if I tell you her race am I racist?) asked me discreetly if she could buy one of his books for him "because she is so happy to see a boy who loves to read and wants him to be able to get the books he wants." At first I felt a little embarrassed. . . I mean, $5 was the budget, I wasn't trying to discourage reading. But then I realized she was trying to be nice, so she gave Logan $3 to cover an extra book, and he told her thank-you. In the moment I said, "What do you say?" and she said, "He said thank-you," and Logan said, "Thank you," again. I felt kind of bad about that.

On the way home from our date I told Logan I would either take him to get a root beer float or we could get supplies for root beer floats and share with everyone at home. He chose to share with everyone at home, and I thought that was pretty cool.

That was two weeks ago.

Today they asked me who was winning for the week. I explained that the offer had expired, but in case you are wondering, it's a tie. . . for messiest room.