Ears and Eyeballs

Today was a pretty boring Sunday at work. We are all Christmas o rama right now, which I kinda hate, but everybody else likes, so I have to be all Christmas cheer and shit. Anyway, our store is built over an inground swimming pool, use to be a party house in the day I hear. We have made the pool into a koi pond, and we have some fish that are up to 2 feet long. Kids love it. There's your build up. So, it must have been daddies weekend in San Antonio. All day we had dads with their kiddies in and out for this crazy light or that funny snowthing. I met the cutest little bundle of tomboy I'd ever seen today. About 3 I guess, all ears and eyeballs, bright and shining in a store of over 5 million breakable things. She wondered around in her hunting vest and boots with her hippy dad for a while til she spotted the pond. We have 4 foot rails around the fish pond for this reason. The call was too much.... The need too great....
splash! A myriad of ornaments to the swimming pool. (we keep a net for this reason.) a thousand tears later, and several minutes of coaching finally brings the little felon over. She said she was sorry and told me she dropped something in the pond. A short talk with dad and a few more tears brought out a confession of a seasoned preschool criminal."Okay, I threw them in..." She spoke so well for her age and she chewed on every tear until the full truth had been spilled and her wrongs were righted. I thanked her for her apology and patted her head. Her dad felt awful, but I just laughed it off and told him the lesson he taught her by making her own up to it was more important than any damage done. In the end I gave her something she could throw in the pond...Fish food. It gives me hope that at least some parents are still teaching their kids right from wrong.