Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some coal miners that makes you believe that we CAN make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time.
A young family moved into a house down the road from a large surface coal mine. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on and spent much of each day observing the miners. Eventually the miners, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.
At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a couple of dollars. The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the two dollar "pay" she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account. When they got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, "I worked last week with the coal miners down the road from our house.
"My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working at the mine again this week, too?"
The little girl replied, "I will if "those ***-holes at Caterpillar don't deliver the trucks" ..."
A young family moved into a house down the road from a large surface coal mine. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on and spent much of each day observing the miners. Eventually the miners, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.
At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a couple of dollars. The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the two dollar "pay" she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account. When they got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, "I worked last week with the coal miners down the road from our house.
"My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working at the mine again this week, too?"
The little girl replied, "I will if "those ***-holes at Caterpillar don't deliver the trucks" ..."
