A deal’s a deal

Hope, Faith, and their mother invited Samuel and I to join them for the local high school’s production of Beauty and Beast. I was very excited to go because many members of the cast were the same students I have worked with through Bible studies and various ministries at church. I knew it would be very well done and a lot of fun to see.

Samuel, however, was not convinced. Dread might be the better word to describe his feelings toward attending the performance.

So I made a deal with Samuel. If he would attend this performance with me, which was something that I really wanted to do, then I would do something with him that he really wanted to do the following day. He took the deal and we attended the performance.

I was right. The students did a phenomenal job and I enjoyed the performance very much. What I did not enjoy was the sour look of agony on Samuel’s face the entire time. If someone hadn’t known better, they might have thought I was torturing him. He made it through without making a peep though and without causing a scene, so I have video arcade games in my future.

There was a valuable lesson learned through this experience (for me, not for him). The next time I make a deal like this one, I am going to stipulate that he do so with a smile on his face! He told me on the car ride home that he actually enjoyed it a lot more than he thought he would, and that it wasn’t all bad. I suppose it would have been too much to ask for him to actually show that while we were there because then he couldn’t prove his point.