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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOne of the best places to grab lunch with my 4-year-old twins is at Sam\u2019s Club. We can walk around getting some samples and then we can grab a really cheap pretzel along with a drink. It\u2019s great entertainment when we just need to get out of the house for something to do.<\/p>\n
On this particular day I was sitting down at the table while they enjoyed their pretzels and I enjoyed a slice of pizza. The two of them were chatting away about how they\u2019ll get to ride the bus to kindergarten next year and I was just people watching. All of a sudden, a little girl with blonde hair came and sat down at our table.<\/p>\n
She had the biggest grin and her eyes lit up as she sat next to one of the twins and across from me. I glanced up to see if I could find her mom but I didn\u2019t really see anyone. I asked her what her name was and how old she was. She really didn\u2019t say anything, all she was doing was smiling. The twins started talking to her, telling them their names in hope she would tell them hers.<\/p>\n
I looked around again and still didn\u2019t see her mom anywhere. I started thinking to myself, \u2018Wow this is really odd! I wonder if her mom is looking for her? Maybe this little girl slipped away and the mom was calling her name?\u2019 I tried to listen for a frantic mama looking for her baby. Nothing.<\/p>\n
In my head I decided that if nobody came up within the next few minutes then I\u2019d notify an employee. But for now, she was safe and comfortable hanging out with us so I just kept talking to her in hopes she would open up. Every few seconds I would glance up to look around and see if anyone was claiming her. There was a long line of people waiting to order food so maybe she belonged to one of them? This was pretty crazy though! Nobody called her name or even made contact with me to let me know they were aware she was sitting here.<\/p>\n
I started to get more and more anxious about who she belonged to when all of a sudden, a man walked up and said, \u2018Hey, thanks for letting her sit here.\u2019 I immediately responded with a, \u2018Oh my gosh no problem at all!\u2019 It must be her dad. I thought about my own husband and how he probably would have just continued to let our kids sit somewhere, too. Men don\u2019t really have that courtesy, \u2018is it okay if she sits here?\u2019 type of conversation starter. So I was kind of like, \u2018meh, understandable.\u2019<\/p>\n
He had to have been standing there the whole time. Could he see the little bit of panic I had in regards to finding her parents? He was definitely more reserved and his daughter seemed really outgoing, so he probably was cringing the whole time anyways. No need to make it more awkward.<\/p>\n
He showed her the food he got her and she hopped off the bench to follow him. She grabbed her food off of the table he was sitting at and ran back to our table to sit down and eat. I flashed a smile his way to let him know it was totally fine and he acknowledged it. Then began the next 20 minutes of sitting and eating lunch with a tiny stranger that couldn\u2019t keep her eyes off of us.<\/p>\n
She never told me her name or how old she was, but her smile was infectious. The twins kept talking to her, trying to engage in a conversation. She never wanted to talk, she just wanted to be around us. The entire time she never said one word. So we just kept talking to her as if she was partaking in everything we said.<\/p>\n
Once it was time for us to get going, we started packing up our food and got our jackets on. We all said goodbye to her and headed for the door. Without missing a beat, she grabbed her uneaten food and drink and then followed us. She skipped alongside our cart and I had to stop. I tried coaxing her towards her dad but she wouldn\u2019t budge. I took another step and she took one too.<\/p>\n
At this point I started to get a little uneasy. Is she scared of him? What if she doesn\u2019t want to go with her dad? What if he abuses her? What if he is really mean to her? I honestly didn\u2019t know what to do in this moment. My mom radar was starting to go off and I got a little sick to my stomach.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m contemplating my next move, the dad walked up. I won\u2019t lie \u2013 I was a bit nervous. Then he spoke and my whole demeanor changed. \u2018I\u2019m so sorry,\u2019 he started off, \u2018my wife and other daughter recently died in a car accident and I guess she wanted to hang out with you guys.\u2019 He had literal tears in his eyes as he grabbed her hand to walk back to their table.<\/p>\n
I felt like the biggest B. I honestly hated the way I was previously judging him. This poor man was just trying to get through a lunch at Sam\u2019s Club in the most normal way possible and yet his daughter sought out a total stranger (a mom, nonetheless) and her daughters to sit with. It was probably ripping his heart out the entire time, yet this little girl wanted to stay near us. I don\u2019t blame him for not being overly friendly about the situation. It all made sense now.<\/p>\n
You literally never know what path someone is walking when you see them on any given day. It\u2019s so easy to judge someone\u2019s bad attitude. It\u2019s so easy to wonder why someone is so standoffish. It\u2019s so easy to internally damn them without knowing a single thing about their lives. You never know what someone is going through. You just never know. This man was swallowing his heartache and I had zero idea.<\/p>\n
I left without offering to help out, which I hated myself for even more. So, I did what every other human does when they\u2019re trying to find someone \u2013 I got on my local mom group on Facebook. I also, like every other curious human being, tried googling details of what happened. I scoured through numerous articles and news sites. I tried searching through Facebook profiles seeing if any names I came across, fit who I saw.<\/p>\n
After a few hours I had a message from someone saying it sounded like their cousin\u2019s family. He was from out of state and was visiting family. After a bit of back and forth she told me he was very thankful for all the offers I threw out, but preferred to have privacy at this time. Then my heart sank for a second time. There I was, trying to be so nosey and Googling his poor wife and daughter, yet he didn\u2019t have the energy to indulge me. None of them did and why should they? I was a total stranger. Truly it wasn\u2019t my business anyways.<\/p>\n
Maybe I reminded the little girl of her mama. Maybe her mama timed our meeting so perfectly and sent me to spend a few minutes with her. Maybe her mama knew exactly what she needed on this particular day and made sure to give her a beautiful meeting with a stranger. Maybe her mama channeled herself through me for a bit and the little girl could feel her. I don\u2019t believe in coincidences. I absolutely believe her mama had a hand in this.<\/p>\n
So now a chance meeting at Sam\u2019s Club has forever changed the way I approach anyone I come into contact with while in public. I\u2019ve always been really sweet to people I see while out and about. But now I will make that extra effort to smile at everyone. You never know who needs it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cOne of the best places to grab lunch with my 4-year-old twins is at Sam\u2019s Club. We can walk around getting some samples and then<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4418,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4416\/revisions\/4418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}