Beauty on the Inside....or Not

Recently I posted about my favorite rock. You can read it here if you haven't already.
http://joytobelieve.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-favorite-rock.html

That post reminded me of a story I wanted to blog about. So Here it is. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty.


Billy in Kindergarten Mommy’s Pride

Billy went to Kindergarten at Homecroft Elementary School in St Paul. His teacher was named Renee. He was allowed to call her Renee. There were a set of twins in Billy’s class named Mitch and Sheila. Mitch and Billy did not get along very well. Mitch was troublesome and of course Billy was angelic. 8)

Sheila had a very noticeable facial birth defect. She was very sweet and shy. Mitch was the exact opposite of Sheila. He was handsome and obnoxious. Their mother was never friendly with me as she thought Billy was the root of Mitch’s problems at school.

We were at a school event sitting at a table with Mitch, Sheila and their Mom. We were discussing a project the kids had been working on to discover the meaning of their names. For instance, William means protector. Sheila’s mom was trying to coax Sheila into telling us the meaning of her name. She was painfully shy but eventually she whispered, “Beautiful”. Billy exclaimed to Sheila, “You are beautiful!” Sheila smiled but looked unconvinced. Billy emphatically said, “You really are beautiful.” He looked at her mom and said, “She is beautiful.”

In this moment I was so proud of Billy. My son looked past the scars on Sheila’s face and saw the truth of what really makes people beautiful, their soul. I was overwhelmed with emotion as I smiled at my young son.

Sheila’s mom smiled at Billy too, then she cocked her head to one side and said, “Well that’s nice, particularly after what you said about me.”

My mind went uuuuhhhh, uh oh! I looked at Billy with raised eyebrows. He shrugged his shoulders and said without apology or hesitation, “I said she was ugly.” I gasped.

Never in all my life have I wanted to embrace my child and then strangle them within ten seconds!

I must say though looking back at this event I acknowledge in both circumstances with Sheila and her mom, Billy was seeing the inside of the person.

I gently admonished Billy saying, "Billy that is not a nice thing to say." I then said with a bit of a smirk, "If you can't say something good then there is nothing good to say." However wrong this may be, I did not make him apologize.

Joytobe