Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little girl and some construction workers 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, next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers.
Eventually the construction crew, 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 own paycheck at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, "I worked last week with the crew building the house next door to us."
"My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working on the house again next week?"
The little girl replied, "I will if those assholes at Home Depot ever deliver the fucking sheet rock..."
Kind of brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?
I'm pretty sure Grandma was NOT impressed... 