Mabye, Just Maybe, There's Hope for America.

The other day they had me working the toy section again. I was zoning along in the aisles as usual, when a blue eyed, lively little blonde girl of 10 or so came to find me. She was pushing her little baby brother in her stroller.

She was a bright, happy, cheerful, wholesome and gorgeous child, the kind you knew was destined to become captain of the cheer squad, be voted most popular, and go on to become a super model or Miss America.

I expected her to ask me where the Barbies or the teddy bears were located. Please forgive me for having been led by stereotypes. What she asked for instead surprised the daylights out of me. She spoke in a cheerful, clear, confident, and very mature way.

"Sir, do you carry any microscopes here?"

Say What?

"Do you carry any microscopes? I saw on your corporate website online that you had some here in the store."

Confident, cyber literate, articulate, and interested in science. [Non Sequitur. Does not compute.] I took her to the section where we carried a line of science toys with the National Geographic brand name. She was VERY happy. Happier than a tornado in a trailer park. Happier than a Wal Mart security executive throwing smoke bombs on a crowd of union organizers in a store parking lot.

She gushed on and on about the planetarium sets we had. "This would be so awesome in my room! Look, it's even got the proper configuration of the planets, with Pluto orbiting inside of Neptune's orbit during a retrograde phase of its eliptical!"

"I take it you're interested in Science?"

"Yup! that's me! I confess, I'm a major science geek...."

She put down the planetarium, grabbed the microscope set, and turned around to go find her mother. Her long, blonde, cheerleader hair bobbed about as she went. I stood there, thinking. I thought some more. I wiped a tear from my eye, and I prayed to God that the young lady would be able to carry her love of science all the way through the materialism and confusion of youth, and go on to do something great for our world. I went to find her mother.

"Ma'am, please allow me to compliment you on your most exceptional child." Her daughter came up and kept chattering on about the microscope. "yeah, right ......tell me about it....."