Cameron will spend hours looking at Lego catalogs, the Lego Club magazine and the Lego Brickmaster magazine. He will look at them until he has memorized the name and price of each Lego set. He will look at them until he can recite the text of the Lego comic strip. He will look at those catalogs and magazines until the pages are falling out.
Last night, he was again perusing a Lego Club magazine when he noticed that there was a contest to build something that the Lego firefighters could use to fight fires. Doubtless, he had read of this contest before, but this time he noticed that 5 lucky winners would receive a $100 Lego gift card. AND the deadline had not yet passed!
Feverishly, he began to plan and build, all the while chattering excitedly over what he would do with his prize winnings. "Cameron," I pointed out, "I think a lot of kids enter the contest. So, even if you build a reeeaaallllyyyy great Anti-Arson Water Cannon 204.0, you might not win."
He paused. "You're right. Probably like eighteen kids enter! And only five win! But, think about it! What's really important?" And here he raised an eyebrow, preparing to impress me. "Winning the contest? Or having a really great time building an awesome Lego model? Having a really great time, OF COURSE!" He smiled charmingly.
Despite this assertion, he spent the evening brushing up on his math skills by calculating which Lego sets he could buy with $100. "Or what if mine is SO good, that they give me ALL FIVE of the prizes. And THEN I'd have $500! And I could buy the Death Star for $399.99! And I'd STILL have money left to buy MORE Legos with!"
After bedtime, he came out of his room, his eyes bright with excitement, to point out that $100 could buy him all of the new Lego Bionicles with the gold pieces that you can use to build one big gold Lego Bionicle.
"Well," I told him, "I just heard some really sad news. In a county called Haiti, there was a big earthquake. And Haiti is a country where a lot of people are very poor, and they don't have strong houses like we do and they don't have good hospitals and they don't have enough food or water. And now, because of the earthquake, a lot of people got hurt, and a lot of people died, and a lot of people don't have any where to live."
Cameron looked very serious for a moment. "That's really sad," he said. He took a few spoonfuls of his cereal and then looked up. "Hey Mommy? Maybe if I do win that Lego contest, maybe instead of buying something for myself, maybe I could give the gift card to Haiti instead."
He's a pretty great kid.
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5 comments:
He's also the kid that finally pushed me over the edge into the full-blown ugly cry. Which I really, really have been needing to have. The one all full of fear and grief and all the awfulness I've been feeling for the last 28 hours.
He's a good boy, that one.
Awww, Corey . . . I'm at once sad and happy that Cameron pushed you to tears. When I think of Haiti, I think of your family, and you've been on my mind ever since I heard the news yesterday morning.
Cameron definitely needs to enter this contest, and you should print out your blog post and include it with the entry.
Sharon...its those times when you feel like you must be doing something right, great job on raising the pretty cool kid!
Cameron=awesome. What a generous and amazing little man.
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