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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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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