Oh Sh*t!

When my son was two years old, his favorite movie was "The Sandlot."  If you aren't familiar with it the movie tells the story of a group of boys who play baseball in an open field - the sandlot.  The main character - Smalls - is the new kid on the block and isn't very athletically inclined.  In fact, he doesn't know a lot about sports.  He doesn't even know who Babe Ruth is!

The end of the sandlot butts up against a junk yard - complete with its own junk yard dog whom everyone refers to as the beast.  The boys regularly lose baseballs that are hit over the wall of the junk yard and cannot be retrieved because of the beast. 

One day as the boys lose their last baseball, Smalls volunteers to run home and get another ball.  The only problem is that the ball is from his step father's sports collection and it has been signed by Babe Ruth. 

Of course, this ball is hit over the wall of the junk yard and when the boys discover that it is a Babe Ruth ball they devise all kinds of plans to get the ball back.  But none of them work.  Finally, one boy from the team decides he will hop the fence and get the ball back.  He manages to do this but the beast decides to chase him.  The boy manages to get back over the fence but the dog jumps over the fence, too.  When Benny sees this he says, "Oh sh*t!" 

This scene contains the one and only bad word in the movie.  And it is the one and only word that my son decided to repeat from the movie - and at two years old, no less.  He would reenact the scene from the movie for anyone who would watch, proudly saying "Oh sh*t!"  The rest of the movie was filled with all kinds of funny and witty lines.  But my son concentrated on the one bad one.

We sometimes are guilty of the same thing.  There are so many good and wonderful and pleasant things that happen to us and around us.  Yet we can choose to concentrate on the few bad things - the one naughty word so to speak.  We focus on the sh . . .  er, the nasty things instead of the good ones.

Let's try to focus on the good things instead of the bad.  Sure, bad things are going to happen.  But we don't have to dwell on them.  Focusing on the blessings helps us to be thankful for what we have. And we have a lot more to be thankful for than we do to be sad about.

Blessings!
Amy