Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Artist of the Week: Kindness

Max by Teckelcar
Max, a photo by Teckelcar on Flickr.
 This week's artist is the eternally building Max.

Larry took this picture of Max about a month ago and I think it is one of my favorites. For once Max does not have his rigid "picture smile" pasted across his face. The lighting is soft and brings out the warm tones and the relaxed and happy expression adds to the picture's overall warmth. In the picture Max is posing by a model of a catapult he had just created out of dominoes. As always, he requested a photograph and Larry was more than happy to oblige. The squarish platform in the upper right of the catapult is where the projectile would place. Obviously it's non-functional, but it was fun for him to create.

Anyhoodle, this week's art is a bit different. It's more about what Ma does, as in actions, opposed to what he did.

lunchbox by Teckelcar
lunchbox, a photo by Teckelcar on Flickr.
I have a picture of Max's lunchbox (bag really) to signify what he has been doing this school year. One of Max's classmates is a sweet girl who is deathly allergic to peanuts. We are talking instant anaphylactic shock if she encounters just the smallest bit of a peanut. She has lunch at a table separate from the  class that is peanut free with the other food allergy students.

Max decided that he would forgo peanut butter at breakfast and lunch so he would not be a danger to his friend. I was mystified at first, bag lunches had become very difficult and most of the time he would just barely nibble the sandwich.. Why did he stop eating peanut butter? Max didn't really care about all of our alternate non- peanut butter options.

Well into the school year I finally asked Max what was going on and his reply utterly amazed me. He was avoiding peanut butter before an after school so that he was not a danger to her.

What an incredibly kind and thoughtful thing that Max was doing and it was completely his very own idea.

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