Spreading Joy and Having Fun!

The silly season is upon us!
Traffic in the stores is abysmal; crowds are pushy and rude; marketing to play on our greed for the next best thing is everywhere!

I enjoy a bit of the hustle and bustle I suspect, as long as the"reason for the season" is remembered, my joy can been seen in my smile. I love the look on the little one's this time of year. a magical time in their lives and fondly remembered by yours truly as a time when Santa Claus came to town on Christmas eve, and hopefully spoiled us with all the toys we asked for.

So Mary and I went out last Saturday two weeks before the big day. Now there were two ways of attacking this venture out into the wilds of retail with 14 days before Christmas: We could be like most of the denizens out there and go wild and grumpy, stealing parking spaces, cutting off drivers in a mad rush to get in and out of stores, knock people over in line ups at the mall...or......the opposite.

We donned Santa hats and red sweat shirts and off we went with good cheer as our intent. What a difference it made in the lives of the people we crossed.

Frowns in long line ups turned to smiles as David and his beautiful wife in long red hats with floppy white pom poms bounced in and out of places.

"You made my day" said one lady.
"How wonderful of you two to do this today" said another

Cashiers frowns turned to big smiles as we paid for our take out coffee. "You guys look great" was heard often.

Now the processor on my cochlear implant does not like hats! The mic gets buried in order to keep the hat on.
So my comprehension, which is bad at best in noise and with strangers, fell to about 10%.

Everything I heard, Mary had to tell me after what was said in the car when I removed Santa's head gear.

Mattered not! Total strangers came up to me/us and starting talking with big grins on their faces pointing at our hats.
I knew what they were saying without hearing!
Happiness and Joy have no communication issues.

The Kids grinned and pointed us out to their hurried and stressed out parents, which in turn brought adult smiles. That in itself was a great gift.
A smile on any child is worth all the effort in the world.

Little things mean a lot?
No!
Little things mean everything.

Remember that Joy spread is 100 times more wonderful than Joy kept small.

I hope you can bring a smile to someone today.

Best,

David