The other day, I decided to share a true story with my five-year-old granddaughter. I told her that I had found a live bee on the bathroom window, and how I’d carefully captured it and set it free outside. My goal was to help her understand not to be afraid of bees and not to kill things out of fear.
She gave me a hug and told me I’d done a good job letting the bee go so it could be with its friends. I gave myself a mental pat on the back.
Later that day, when my daughter came to pick her up, I wanted to see if my story stuck with her and prompted her to tell her mother the story of “Papa and the Bee.”
With a huge smile on her face, she turned to my daughter and said, “Mommy, Papa found a bee in his bathroom. He captured it in a cup. Then he flushed it down the toilet!”
After picking up my jaw off the floor and wiping the tears out of my eyes, I looked at her and said, “REALLY?”
She laughed at her great joke on Papa.
Life is like that. Sometimes, even with the best intentions, things just go awry. And there’s just nothing you can do about it, except maybe to laugh.
