The boy who offered the quarter to our family so we could try and get the merry-go-round running in my previous post clearly left an impression on my three year old son. Totally unprompted, my son asked me today whether or not I remembered the boy. I told him that I sure did. My son asked me if we could go back to the merry-go-round to see if the boy was there. He wanted to also know if the boy could help us again with the merry-go-round.

Now, my son doesn’t fully understand what a quarter is for or why we needed it to make the merry-go-round function (even though at the end of the day it was dad-powered!). What my son did understand was the helping nature of the boy and how touched me and my wife were for the gesture of offering the quarter. My son knew the gesture was very helpful and meant to make him and his sister happy.

The questions from my son surprised me so much because he was exhausted from daycare and playing outside at 100mph with his friends at the park. There wasn’t anything to trigger that memory since we were all wrapping up dinner. I can’t quite figure out why my son was thinking about it, but I’d like to think he was also appreciative of the gesture and had fun on the merry-go-round. After our brief conversation, my son also thanked me for pushing the merry-go-round because he clearly had a lot of fun (and my day was made because I got some credit too!). I’m sure the next time we go there, he will ask to go on the merry-go-round again and I hope he will remember the boy with the quarter as well. A small gesture goes a long way!