Most boys just don’t love shopping. At least not the boys in my life. Noah, on the other hand, enjoys it a lot – with certain stipulations.
When I was a teenager, I loved to shop. I would go to a mall with other teenage girls and we’d giggle as we tried on clothes. It helped that we were skinny (even though we thought we were fat) and everything looked good on us.
But you know what really ruined shopping for me? It became much less fun when I was no longer spending my parent’s money. When I had to make the money in order to spend it, the scale on the fun-o-meter went down dramatically.
These days, I still don’t love shopping. It’s really more of a chore, honestly. But Noah enjoys it for two reasons.
Noah loves to move. He likes riding to the store, and he likes strolling around the store. He likes seeing all the things, and mostly, he likes seeing the different people. I often say that we could park ourselves at the busiest part of a mall and he would sit for hours watching the various people go by.
Invariably, a person or people will stop and talk to Noah, and this is the other things he loves. Attention from strangers. He will smile, and they will tell him how amazing his smile is.
And that is what Noah is really good at. He’s good at finding joy in the mundane. He enjoys the little chores that I don’t look for enjoyment in. A long car ride, a long walk, watching people move around him – especially his people.
Noah reminds me to find joy in the boring. He reminds me to look around for interesting things and people. We spend so much time looking at our little devices these days that it is an especially important lesson. Look around. Find the wonder.
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