Mr G

Today I made a fool of myself…which is not surprising, except for the fact that this time I brought down a 6year old kid with me.

Today was the Salvos Divisional Kids Big Day Out, so as Kids Church Coordinator I went along with the kids from Box Hill and everyone had a great time. Being a divisional event there were kids there from a number of different salvo corps, so naturally we had to where name tags, which the kids made themselves using a texta and a sticker…clever I know. Anyway, a few of the kids that came with Box Hill had brought friends along and trying to be a good leader I made it my business to introduce myself to each of them. This was working quite well until I came to a little girl whose name tag appeared to say ‘Mr G’. I took a moment to have a think about why the tag would say ‘Mr G’ and remembered that the adult she had come with (one of the kids Church parents) was named ‘Graham’, so I put what I thought was two and two together and figured that perhaps he was known as ‘Mr G’ and she was wearing his name tag. So in my wisdom I went up to her and introduced myself and asked if she was having fun, and then proceed to say… ‘I haven’t met you before, my name is Emma, what’s yours’ hoping to get some clarification on the ‘Mr G’ situation. However, it turned out she was a little shy, so she just looked at me and pointed at her name tag. So trying to be cool, and welcoming, I responded ‘Mr G, that says Mr G, that’s not your name is it?’ a little dumbfounded the little girl just looked at me and then at her name tag and pointed again. Very confused by this stage I repeated (just in case she hadn’t heard the first time) ‘Mr G? really?’ and still dumbfounded she looked at me and walked off. Feeling even more confused and a bit defeated I turned around only to find Dustin and Jess in fits of laughter…Jess then explained to me that the tag didn’t say ‘Mr G’ at all, it actually said ‘Meg’ and she had written it herself but she was only 6 and couldn’t write very well.

So feeling very embarrassed I went and found Meg to apologise, I explained that I couldn’t read very well and that I was sorry, but also suggested that perhaps well just called her ‘Mr G’ anyway, coz I was a pretty cool nickname. But she graciously declined. So the poor girl will probably never want to come back to Kids Church again, now that I have humiliated her, I didn’t mean it…and you think perhaps Dusty and Jess could have said something earlier…but never mind…in my heart she will always be Mr G.

Oh and just for the record…Kat came later on in the day and also thought the tag said Mr G…In fact you can make up your own mind...I have drawn a little picture of what the name tag looked like...tell me that doesn't say 'Mr G'...
I guess that's just all part of the adventure!