A Prayer and One Ugly Dog

So today I had an experience that contrasted from the norm of a typical day. Everyday I work with kids and my vocabulary is very predictable. My daily famous quotes are- “Watch your language”, “Stop”, “Get off…”, “Stop throwing…”, “Talk appropriately”, etc. With all the negativity that goes on it can be very draining. However, on the flipside there is enough good to keep me going. Today something happened that was quite endearing and definitely worth blogging about.

With my work I get to drive out to Tremonton and get kids. Usually I was just doing this in the mornings but recently I do it in the afternoons as well. I haven’t done it very often but my drives back from Tremonton in the afternoons have been kind of routine. Routine in the sense that I have one little girl that I take back that goes berserk every time-EVERY TIME. I usually drive a suburban that has no AC and with no AC you can be certain that the windows are down. This specific little girl will at first complain about the wind and then she starts screaming at the top of her lungs to the other kids and she tells them to "stop sassing" her. A “sass” in her mind can be just a look in her direction. Then she starts bawling and the screaming continues for the entire ride. Luckily for me the noisiness of the wind drowns out a lot of the noise. It’s always quite comical actually but her screams come from the gut and they are screams of horror. It’s more of the after math thoughts that make it comical. I always do what I can but she’s always pretty hysterical. Anyway, I mention all of that just to give you a background of what a drive is usually like, but today that wasn’t the case…

Today I went to the park where I pick them up and there was the UGLIEST dog I have ever seen. It was a black, small dog and it was wobbling on three legs. It had no hair except for on his face and on his tail. On it’s head it had hair that swooped back and then on its chin it had a long, white goatee. I want to post a picture of an ugly dog picture found from the internet to give you an idea, but those pictures scare me and I don’t want to look at it every time I get onto my blog. Alas, just know that physically it wasn’t very desirable. Anyway the kids had given this dog a name and the name given was Hope- it also had received the nickname of Baby. Neither of which are names that I would of pegged for the creature. The kids however didn’t want to leave the dog and were sad that it was Friday because they wanted to come back tomorrow and take care of the dog. Sadly though we had to leave the dog behind and head back to Brigham. On the way back to the Boys and Girls Club it was very pleasant and I was enjoying the fact that my little screamer wasn’t at the club today. Plus to add to my enjoyment my favorite song came on the radio and I probably hear this particular song 3 times a year on the radio. Therefore, I turned the radio up very loud and started singing in my extremely “wonderful” singing voice. At this however my kids wanted me to turn the radio off (“I didn’t think my singing was that bad!”). I told them I would after the song and they were okay with it, so I soon learned that they didn’t want the radio off because of my singing-Phew...haha. Once I did turn the radio off I soon learned why they desired some quietness. My three girls in my backseat soon said a prayer together for the “lovely” Hope. They desired his safety and hoped that he would be okay. It was the sweetest thing that I have witnessed in a long time. All summer I have witnessed how friends can have a bad influence on you and how they can make you act differently then how you normally would act without them around. All kids are good but I’ve come to believe that peers can be very detrimental. However, today I was proven wrong. It was good for me to see the strength that friends can give another. I love learning from kids, and I think it’s crazy how teaching goes full circle. We’re supposed to be teaching them but they always end up teaching us.