Boasting about my son

I just want to boast about my eldest son for a minute. I've complained about him and his brothers here before and some balance is called for. Yesterday, though, he told me this story (without a hint of boasting).

"Today we buried a time capsule."

"Oh, where?" asked me.

"Along the side of the gym, you know, where all those bushes are. We had a big tube and put tape on it, vinyl tape. We wrote on these papers stuff about ourselves and put them in the tubes. Mr Willson had this cool spade with a narrow blade and we took turns digging a vertical hole for the tube." (This is the abbreviated version of the story, it actually went on a bit more than this!)

At this point my interest in the story was only held by the fact that he hadn't told me why they'd done it and when they were planning for it to be dug up again.

"So, did you dig up anyone else's tube?"

"No!" What kind of question is that?

"How long until someone digs up your tube?"

"Oh, we haven't decided yet, sometime before the end of the year."

Double-take from me. Huh? And here I was thinking five years, ten years.

"We wrote stuff about ourselves and when we dig it up we'll see how much we've changed."

A nice enough story, but the post-script he gave as I left the room is what grabbed me.

"We forgot to wipe the dirt off our feet before we went back to our classroom and tracked dirt right through the building. I found my teacher vacuuming it all up and I helped her. My friend W came and helped too."

"Did she ask you to help?"

"Nope, I thought it was very unfair for her to have to do it all, so I helped."

WOW! 

Maybe he is learning something from us after all. Actually he has matured a lot in the last twelve months. We can see big changes, positive changes. It is so encouraging. I hope he is encouraged when they finally dig up that tube and he sees how he's grown during the year. His lack of pride was endearing. I said to him later,

"I'm so impressed that you went to help your teacher. You really have a clear sense of what is fair."

"Oh, I do?"

Love it!