The time-traveller’s mum couldn’t be more proud

Four-year-old Johnny was walking the dog with his mum after nursery. The chat was happy and wide-ranging. The dog ran in and out of the bushes, exploring. Then Johnny took his mum’s hand and went silent for a moment. She asked what he was thinking and he replied, “I’d like to build a time machine.”

Surprised, but playing along, she asked, “And what time would you like to go back to?” I know very little about her.

I know she uses her Facebook page for the good. Every day she posts a beautiful image, an uplifting article, a funny cartoon. She never engages in arguments. It’s like she is on a one-woman crusade to make the world a happier place. Recently, her mum died. And I know that hit her hard. But, a few days later, she was back online, posting beautiful images, uplifting articles and funny cartoons.

All too often we assume that “sunshine and light” people are just born that way, that they never had to deal with hardship or suffering.

As if they lead charmed lives, unlike our own. In my experience, that is almost never true. It tends to be the ones who have known darkness who shine brightest for others.

They are my heroes!

“Ohh, no,” he said. “I wouldn’t use it until I was older.

“And then I’d come back to here.”

She asked me what I thought of that?

I said I thought she had a very imaginative wee boy.

And he was lucky enough to have parents who taught him the value of living in the now, and who made that now worth revisiting (which might be a contradiction, but that’s time machines for you!) “That poor old lady will never manage the shop door.”

Tom wrestled briefly with his conscience before leaving his place in the queue to open the door for her.

The lady walked with a stick and was weighted down with shopping, but she seemed disinclined to take advantage of Tom’s kindness. Instead, she stopped where he had been standing and pointed with her stick.

“You dropped something.” Loaded down as she was, the lady might not have managed the door on her own, but she was more than capable of pointing out the £20 note that had fallen from Tom’s pocket. Twenty pounds he would have walked away from and lost, if he hadn’t decided to be a gentleman. “I heard the old saying when I was a boy,” Tom laughed, “and I thought nothing of it, but it seems one good turn really does deserve another.” “Mum. Don’t laugh. I’m serious about this. Can you buy me a diary?”

Helen didn’t laugh. She could tell her teenage son was seriously upset. He felt he’d been taken advantage of in a particularly underhand way.

He was full of righteous anger, and wanted to write how annoyed he was, every day, in a diary. Just to keep the memory – and the anger – fresh.

Well, Helen didn’t just get him a diary, she got him two. When he asked why, she said, “For balance. If you want to keep writing a hateful thing, do it in this book, but make sure you balance it by repeating something you love in the other one.” “We’ll see how it works out,” she told me.

“But, I’m sure I saw the difference even having to think about something positive – let alone write it down – made.”