Doo Hickey

This week, while walking home with our kindergartener, he requested that we stop for a moment. Carefully, he removed his little backpack from off his shoulders, opened it up and pulled out some funny looking rock/wood doo-hickey thing and threw it on the ground.

Me: Um, what’s that?

Son: I don’t know.

Me: Why do you have it?

Son: I picked it up off the ground this morning and put it in my backpack.

Me: Why?

Son: Because I wanted to kick it around while we walk home!

And kick it around he did - until he was bored and his last kick left the doo-hickey in someone’s yard.

Which I saw lying there today - in the very same place he left it yesterday. . .

Which made me consider, how many times we figuratively pick things up off the ground.

Like garbage. . .

Or something someone threw away because it was broken or misused . . .

Or wanted buried.

Or stuff that just isn’t worth anything – or shouldn’t be.

Yet we choose to put it on our backs, pull it out and find a way to kick it around.

To make a deal out of it.

Then it uses up our time, our thoughts, our energy, as we kick around this doo-hickey . . . when we should have just left alone IN THE FIRST PLACE!