Awhile back my wife Teresa asked my son Colby how he was doing during COVID. A little background before I get into that….Colby is a fun-loving, very active kid who requires time with others like I require Hootie & the Blowfish. He always wants to be playing with his friends, doing things with Teresa or me (rarely his evil sister Maddy), or “connecting” online with others by playing games on the iPad or Xbox. He had a basketball tournament out of town one weekend and afterwards on his way home he said he was totally exhausted and just wanted to chill out when he got home. I told him “until someone comes knocking on our door to play.” And sure enough not 5 minutes after we got home one of his buddies was asking him to play and he was out the door. You get the picture.
Anyway, when Teresa asked him how he was doing with COVID he responded with “anytime I start to get annoyed about COVID I think about all the good things that have happened because of it.” He then starts to list a few of the things that he saw as a blessing resulting from this crazy pandemic that is affecting everyone on the planet.
WHAT???? My son, the one who loves poop jokes, who sings about butt cracks, who farts in his sister’s face just dropped a bomb. A bomb that I wish I could say my wife or I taught him but he came up with on his own. Huh.
I’m a big believer that good things can come out of bad situations, but in a pandemic? With millions of confirmed cases and deaths worldwide? Really? You bet. Sometimes it takes something bad for something good to happen. Don’t believe me? Here’s Colby’s list:
-He became great friends with a boy down the street to which he’s had little interaction with in the 5+ years we’ve lived here.
-Fishing became his new, favorite hobby. We have a pond in our neighborhood across the street from our house that he’s fished in here & there over the years and over the summer spent a countless number of hours there nearly every day.
-Basketball is his favorite sport so we put a court in our backyard shortly after COVID happened and he spent a ridiculous number of hours out there having fun and working on his game.
What’s maybe one good thing that has come out of COVID in your life. If you don’t know or haven’t documented anything already take 5 minutes and start writing down blessings that may not have happened otherwise.
One more thing. Did I mention he’s 12? If my poop, fart, butt crack-loving 12 year old kid can do this, you can too.