Any of us with children know the experience of our little ones wanting to "help" when we we're in the middle of some grown-up activity or project. Picture yourself in the middle of  some home repair when your 5 year old comes out of the house with their toy tools and tool belt, saying, "I want to help you, dad." Our initial reaction may be to shoo them asside and tell them that we will play with their toys later, knowing that they would be more in the way than anything. 

That's when we realize that in their mind, their tools (although made of plastic) were real tools, and that their abilities (as limited as they are) are useful for the job. You can see in their little eyes a true desire to help, a true desire to make their mom or dad proud. 

We know that if we allow them to "help" it will likely make the job less efficeint and more cumbersome. But in that moment we realize that the effeciency of the job is so much less important than the joy (and experience!) our child would get from helping us. 

If you’ve ever been to a Costco to shop, you know that you cannot leave the store without showing your receipt to an exit attendant who will dutifully match your receipt against the items in your cart to be sure you haven’t “forgotten” to pay for anything.

Well, a recent trip to the retail giant produced quite a Wait. What?! moment as we were exiting the store with our full-to-overflowing shopping haul.

The friendly, smiling exit attendant asked for our receipt, and we promptly produced it. She scanned the receipt, then our cart, then the receipt again. She then humbly apologized that it was taking so long, informing us that she just needed to find the rib roast (we know — a BIG extravagance!) we had just paid for. After another moment, she said, again with a big, bright smile, “Ahhh, there it is! Have a nice day.”

Then came the, Wait. What?! moment.

She was supposed to be looking first at our cart, then comparing the items in our cart to what was on our receipt, not the reverse, looking at the items on our receipt to see if they were in our cart. She had gotten the proverbial cart before the horse, or in this case, the receipt before the cart!

Clearly, this bubbly, smiling attendant didn’t quite grasp the concept of the job she had been engaged to perform. We can just hear the convo in the break room: “I don’t understand why everyone is so worried about shoplifting. I’ve been working here for a month now and I’ve never found anything even remotely suspicious.” Well, no wonder … you’re so kind, so polite, so well intentioned, but you’re not doing your job correctly!

She was motivated to find items we’d paid for, but might have forgotten, while the management wanted her to be motivated to find the items we might be taking that we hadn’t yet paid for.

Sadly, she was a smiling, happy face, filling a void, accomplishing nothing.

A recent Facebook post takes a new look at an old classic:

I realized something while watching "It's a Wonderful Life" recently. It was something I missed the first 3,317 or so times I watched it. That is, I think the hero of the story isn't George, it's Mary.

The movie starts off with Mary praying for God to be with George. Her prayer (and others) is the catalyst for the angel, Clarence, being sent to George. Mary is the one who sees the beauty of the old broken down house. "It's full of romance, that old place." George sees empty space; Mary sees a space that can be filled with a family's love.

That's why George kisses the broken banister knob in the end; he finally sees what Mary always saw in that house. Mary saw it on the day of their wedding. She was the one who transformed the house into "honeymoon suite." Of course, that happened after she had the idea to offer her $2000 honeymoon money to the people of the town during the bank run. When George is depressed by his friends moving onward and upward in the world and think he's a disappointment to his wife because of it, Mary makes it clear that she "didn't want to marry anybody else in town." Never complaining, she worked "day after day remaking the old Granville house into a home." This while having 4 children and running the USO.

Finally, Mary is the one who goes all over town to ask for help for her husband. Uncle Billy remarks, "Mary did it, George! Mary did it!" I had never noticed her expression before when Uncle Billy says this. She's in the background as he says it, and she mouths "No..." while she shakes her head and moves further into the background. It's an incredibly subtle but important feature of her character: do good for others, but let others receive the credit. She moves fully into the background so that everyone giving money to George can come front and center. This was all orchestrated by Mary but she fades into the background.

Now look at the picture below where Mary is again in the background. Note where she's positioned: over George's shoulder. The one watching over George all these years was Mary. She was as much a guardian angel to George as Clarence was.