The Experiment

My Mom was a chemist by trade.

Over the course of her career she designed hundreds of experiments, some of which were quite elaborate, to provoke the smallest of molecular changes. Then one day, in a fit of suburban housewife frustration, she decided it was time to make her children the object of her research. As you might imagine, the results were less than stellar.

Early one Monday morning, she left a pencil on the edge of the dining room carpet. How long, she wondered, before someone noticed the stray Ticonderoga, bent over, and picked it up. She was careful not to place it in an area of heavy foot traffic. After all, the pencil wasn't meant to be a hazard. Just a bellwether of our observational skills and/or indolence.

On Friday afternoon, the pencil was still there. 

For years and years, my mother would reference the "pencil experiment" as a reminder to her brood of just how little effort it takes to be helpful. Oh the irony that it took an implement known for its eraser to get us to see something so very obvious.

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind." - Henry James