It isn’t hard to understand why you’d be on cloud nine if you won the lottery. A few years ago, shortly after Texas started having a lottery, I purchased about five guesses at a buck apiece. I didn’t win the jackpot, but on one of the five tickets had four out of the six numbers correct.
Matching merely three of the six numbers, something I had done before, means that you win $3.00...no big deal. However, matching four of the number meant that I had two-thirds of the winning numbers and that’s 66.6% to you and me. This had to be at least enough to buy us dinner.
As it turned out, I won $100! But you would have thought I had won the big jackpot! The guy at the 7/11 hands me ten crisp ten-dollar bills and I strutted back to the car like I was Donald Trump.
It’s funny how something so relatively small can fill someone with such a huge amount of joy.
I saw a wonderful example of this yesterday.
A student of mine, who is sweet person, but who struggles academically and typically doesn’t do very well on things like spelling tests, made a 100 on the spelling test.
When I saw the grade I went crazy. You would have thought she had won the big jackpot! Once again, I found myself strutting around like I was Donald Trump. I dragged this child and the test out in the hall and started bragging to everyone I could find.
I even had her take the test and show it to the principal. I wasn’t there, but evidently our principal didn’t miss a beat. She even gave her some candy.
Winning the lottery would be really nice, but I learned an important lesson from my student yesterday. Everything in life doesn’t have to be as big as winning the lottery, but if you allow even the small things to make you that happy…then baby, you win the big jackpot!
And who knows, maybe the principal will give you some candy.
3 comments:
I wish my primary school teachers, and even a couple of Jr. high teachers had blogs that i could read. i am sure i'd be an infamous memory to most of them.
Anyhow i had enough time to browse about 8 blogs down, and i don't know if i'll ever find this place again, so i figured i'd wave here.
genewitch@gmail.com
You are sure right about that! The other day I sent Kathleen some flowers at school for no specific reason, just to say , "I Love You." When she got home, she was on cloud 9 and smiling from ear to ear. I waited to receive the obvious affection I was due, but it didnt happen. So I asked, "How was your day?" She responded that it was awesome, so then I waited for my pat on the back. Still nothing. She then teared up and said, "Parker passed her 4's today in multiplication!"
Gave me a small glimpse into the calling of you teacher types.
Your The man!
T. Ward
the sweet, simple, little pleasures of life... who could beat them? great post.
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