A Good Deed

My 5 year old boy is full of ideas.  Ideas for this.  Ideas for that.  Big ideas.  Grandiose ideas even.  He is an ideas man already...at five!

For the past few weeks he has been talking about selling limes.  We have a lime tree in our back yard loaded with them.  He has asked his dad to make signs.  He has found jars to collect money.  He has decided on the price range for different sized limes.  He has asked me to write notes on the jars and prices on plastic bags.  So this morning he was done with the planning and the talking and he wanted some action.

He is the ideas boy man, and I've been trying so hard not to be the cynical mother.  We live a couple of streets away from the main street of our town, but this street is not a major thoroughfare.  It's a quite residential street and our access is a small high lane up off the street.  Hardly anyone drives or walks past.  I seemed to be coming up with all the reasons why it wouldn't work, but I was so proud of him for thinking of everything and the last thing I wanted to do was crush his enthusiasm.  And despite all of my negativity he still wanted to put a sign up out the front.

At the moment the ladder is on the patio.  "Perfect," he said.  So I put the sign on the ladder.  He got his collection jars ready on the table.  And put his plastic 'Cars' chair in the doorway so he could wait for someone to come and buy his limes.

It was breaking my heart watching him sitting there.  I told him over and over that people usually buy limes from the shops or the markets, they might not want to buy them from someone's house.  I told him that people may not see his sign.  I asked him what he would do if no one bought any limes.  He said, "I won't cry."

He sat for a little while.  I went off to do something and soon he came to me with a sign he had written himself.  He said, "I think the word 'limes' needs to be a little bigger."  So I put up the new sign as well, my heart still breaking.

Thankfully he took his mind off having no customers by playing some computer games.

Early this afternoon a workmate of my husband's and a good friend, Mr V, came to borrow the mower.  When he returned it an hour or so later and came up to say thanks he said, "What's this about?" pointing to the signs.  I laughed and shrugged it off saying that my boy had this idea to sell our limes.  Mr V asked if he had some ready (I'd told my boy to leave them on the tree so we didn't have limes everywhere and to keep them fresh).  I said they were still on the tree and he said he'd buy two.  So I excitedly came inside and told my boy that Mr V wanted to buy some limes.  My boy and I ran up to the lime tree and picked the two best limes we could find while Mr V searched his car for some coins.  The sign said "Super Big - $1" so when my boy gave him the limes Mr V said, "They must be super big ones.  Here's $2."

Well, my heart swelled at the joy that was written all over my little boy's face.
Because of Mr V there was one very happy boy and one very happy mum in our house today.

And I learned something...

It is important to remember to prepare my children for disappointment,
but I must also remember that success is always possible.