Pride (in unexpected places)

While I was in Seattle I picked up Maeve's book - The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. (It's the last lecture given at Carnegie Mellon by a professor (husband, father, friend, son) who was in stage 4 Pancreatic cancer. He wrote it for his kids so that they could read and watch and know who his father is.)

Anyway...one of the things that Randy said he had always wanted to do was win a big stuffed animal at the fair so he could walk around and everyone would think, "Wow. look what he won." He said that until you've done it, you don't know the pride you feel...

So last night I joined Evan at an after hours (8pm-midnight) birthday party at a Laser tag place. Needless to say, the dark, smokey room where the laser tag was going on was not a hit with E. He lasted in there about 12 minutes before he started crying and wanted out of the arena. (Not a big deal, the Game master had said, that we could call for her and she'd let us out.) Later Evan told me he was doing fine until the smoke started coming out. Of course it wasn't real smoke but he thought it was and since it was dark he wanted out. I didn't care.

So we spent the rest of our time in the arcade feeding tokens, 2-at-a time, into various machines to win something. Evan was especially fond of the machine that scoops up candy for the prize. He won the equivalent of a trick-or-treat stash.

He took a shot at winning a stuffed animal in one of those 'claw' machines. He didn't win. Over and over again he tried for different things. Finally, down to his last 2 tokens of the night he turned and said, "Here, you win one for me." No pressure. I told him that things rarely give you a prize, and win or lose, we're leaving when I've had my turn. He agreed. I examined the showcase of stuffed pets and prizes looking for one that I thought might actually keep the grip of that claw. I spotted this white and red valentines puppy. Something about his nose, face and ears made me think I could catch this one and keep it.

Money in, 20 seconds to get the claw in place...the claw lowered, paused, grabbed the puppy and the puppy rose up and began to make that jerky move toward the chute where he would later fall and become a prize! Talk about pride. I had an enormous feeling of pride and when I awarded it to Evan his face beamed and he talked in this little baby talk voice to his new puppy as he hugged his new best friend. It was the perfect ending to the night.

I immediate thought about the comment Randy had made in his book about 'not knowing that feeling of pride of winning the big prize unless you've done it.' I had never really wanted to win one of those prizes, but I wanted to win it for my boy, and last night I felt like Randy must have.

When I checked on Evan late at night, all sound asleep under his covers, he had his new puppy under his arm! (He named his puppy SweetTart. I feel certain he got his inspiration by looking in his bag of candy.)