Hugs from a sweet little girl can erase stress after long work day

By David McElroy · April 23, 2019

My weary muscles ached as I walked into the restaurant for dinner Tuesday evening. I was later than usual because I’d been shooting pictures to prepare for a new real estate listing. I was hot and tired and cranky.

And then Isabella saw me.

She was playing with a couple of other little girls when she saw me, but she dropped them and came running to me. She grabbed my leg to hug me and then reached up for me to pick her up. I reached down and lifted her tiny body and she wrapped her arms around my neck.

All of a sudden, I felt very different. I had energy. I felt happy. I felt as though I must be pretty special for this beautiful little blonde lady to be so happy to see me.

Isabella is the 4-year-old daughter of one of the managers at the restaurant. She’s seen me only a couple of times before, but she accepted me quickly. The first time her mother introduced her to me, she spontaneously ran over and reached out for a hug.

Maybe she loves everybody, but I like to believe Isabella just thinks I’m special. And that makes me happy, so please don’t tell me otherwise.

We sat at my MacBook and I showed her pictures of my cats and dog. After looking at a few dozen pictures, she would call out the name of whichever one whose picture I opened. She loved them all and she would gleefully say their names as she recognized them.

We made silly pictures in PhotoBooth. We made a couple of videos in QuickTime. (See a short example below.) But she kept coming back to the animals.

After about half an hour, I told her I had to leave, but she told me I couldn’t. She held on and said she wanted me to stay. I tickled her a bit to get her happy again before I told everybody goodbye and slipped out.

I live only about a mile from there, so I went home and got Lucy. I knew Lucy would enjoy a car trip and I thought Isabella would be happy to meet Lucy.

When I got back, I went and asked her mother whether it was OK for Isabella to come outside and meet Lucy.

“Oh, yeah,” she said with a wave of her arm. “I trust you. I know you’ll take care of her.”

So Isabella came outside and met my furry girl who probably weighs twice what she does. They were both shy at first. But then Lucy licked Isabella’s face and the little blonde girl laughed and put her arms around Lucy’s neck.

And then it was time for me to go. I asked another employee to come out and hold Isabella’s hand to come back inside, but Isabella cried and said she didn’t want to go back inside. She wanted to go with me and see the cats.

But then she was pulled just inside the door. She stood there looking forlorn — as little children can do so well — and she waved. It wasn’t the adult kind of wave in which the hand moved back and forth. It was the child’s wave. Her hand was like a little fist held up as she opened and closed it.

I waved and Lucy and I walked back to the car.

“Love you,” she called out loudly to us through the slightly open door.

I still need rest. I still need sleep. It was still a long day. But I felt happy. I felt special. Because a little blonde girl loved me.

Hugs and love from a child make powerful medicine.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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