An Activist is Born

Art Linkletter said, “Kids say the darnedest things.” The Bible says, “Out of the mouths of babes…” One of the beauties of living with a child is that they constantly come up with observations and remarks that help us to see the world through fresh eyes. Our grandson is having his first civics lesson and it was all his own idea.

We took five-year-old Gabriel out of town two weeks ago for a quick trip to the beach. While eating dinner one night he suddenly said, “Grammy, if all the soldiers just went home then there would be peace wouldn’t there?” Now we hadn’t been talking about the war that particular night. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, but his remark came out of the blue. “Why, yes,” I said, “if all the soldiers went home there’d be peace.”

Gabriel didn’t bring it up again on the trip, but after we returned home we were having dinner with his parents when he made the same remark. “I think you should write a letter to the president with your idea, Gabriel,” I said. That was three weeks ago. After work today Gabriel came to me with a pencil and paper and asked how to spell “Barak Obama.” “I’m going to write to the President that if all the soldiers just come home there’d be no war.”

My daughter-in-law sat down with Gabriel and had him sound out each word of his note to President Obama making his civics lesson into a phonetics lesson as well. I was a teenager when I began writing letters about the War in Vietnam. I stand in awe of my grandson. Together we went to Grandpa’s den and got an envelope to put his note in and voila, an activist was born.