Kindness

I remember reading in The Female Brain a few years ago about neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine's patient who had a small daughter. The mother had always, always, always fought the gender stereotypes. The little girl didn't get dolls, she got trucks. No fairies, no princesses, no cinderella...and one day her mother walked in her room to find her daughter holding her favourite fire truck. She had it wrapped in a blanket and was cradling it like a baby. And she was saying, "poor truckie." Truckie was sick.

Sometimes you can't beat your way past nature and the need to nurture.

I was reminded of that at work today when my friend Karen told me about her son's adventure a couple of years ago while walking along the street. They had stopped to watch a digger - there is a universal law that boys shall be mesmerized by anything that moves tons of earth: diggers, dump trucks, steam shovels...all power, all the time.

The little one was in his stroller and he caught the digger operator's eye. He called out to Karen to ask if her son loves diggers...and when she said oh yeah, big time, he pulled something out from beside him and threw it in the hole. Then he manoeuvered the big shovel, cradled the object in the shovel's bucket, and brought it up to the surface. He carefully placed it in front of Karen's boy. Then using the shovel's back side, nudged it toward him. To top it all off, an actual policeman came over to pick it up and give it to the little one. It was a boxed Bob the Builder digger- new, wrapped. As Karen said, 'that man has no idea what he did that day.' Her son was over the moon. He ate all his dinner with his Bob the Builder digger and slept that night with it on his chest.

One construction worker beating up nature with his own nurturing.