So a little while ago, the late night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel asked parents in the states to tell their kids that they had ate all of their kid's Halloween candy and post what happened on youtube.
Later that same week, Jimmy came on to say that he had seen the videos and had expected the kids to be angry but hadn't expected them to cry, which every one of them did. he then apologized to those kids but then showed the clips of them on TV, anyways.
(cuz' it's funny, right?)
For those who follow my articles, they know that my whole focus is helping young people find their strengths, rise above their challenges and to make their own successes in their lives. This is what I am hired to do in my practice working with students having problems, guiding parents and doing workshops with teachers.
(Can you see where I am going with this?)
A great comment on this event in one on-line blog said so the kid says over the phone to his dad, uhmmm.. sorry Dad but I started a fire in the garage and your car got kinda burnt up. The father races home to find everything's alright. The kid says just foolin' Ha. Ha. Ha. Some Joke. that candy is the kid's treasure and the parent pretends to eat it all for some lame joke against a child. The joke is Mr. Kimmel. he thinks that powering over a kid is fun.
I would suggest a different way to look at this.
In the 1950 film Harvey, featuring Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, Elwood (who's best friend in an invisible six foot rabbit named Harvey) says the following:
I used to be clever and then I tried kind.. I recommend kind.
There are so many opportunities in life that invite us to stop and see the humor in the moment. I can't say that I have never gone for the zinger, I have, but I have tried to make it one of my goals to use kind humor whenever I can.
The second point would be that so many of the young people I work with have had moments from their past that seemed innocuous at the time to a casual observer, color the rest of their lives with a new damaged false epiphany of themselves. I wonder how many of these kids who were the subject of the funny videos will end up seeing someone like me in the future.
Hey Jimmy Kimmel I Ate All My Kids Halloween Candy
