Fun at the Rockcliffe Book Fair

Marcie, Jim and I went to the Rockcliffe Book Fair on Saturday afternoon. We bought enormous quantities of books. It was really lucky that the very kind Kathy A loaned me her car the night before.

Of course, they don't just sell books at the book fair. In the gym, they had a wide selection of food and everywhere you went the Rockcliffe Public students were selling stickers to raise money for Guardian Angel School in Pitseng, Lesotho, their twin school.

I bought my first sticker from a boy who might have been in grade two or three. He let me look through his whole supply and I chose one with bright blocks of colour.

Later in the gym, two grade sixers, Olivia and Danielle, approached us. I showed them the sticker I'd already bought. "You could buy more," said Danielle.

"Okay," I said. "Let me see." Olivia handed me her stickers and I looked through them. They were mostly rectangles with a capital "L" in black marker and scribbled lines in coloured pencil. "Are these all you've got?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said.

Now I know these kids were doing something for a good cause, but they wanted something from me, namely my hard-earned cash. "Are you really bringing your best game to this," I asked. "These kids in Lesotho, do they send you letters? With pictures? Are they just a few scribbles?"

Here's a video that Marcie shot during this exchange:

Unfortunately, Marcie didn't get the end of this conversation. When Olivia said, "most people just give us the money."

And Danielle practically yelled, "we're not asking you to marry the stickers!"

Jim and Marcie laughed so hard that I broke down and gave them all the change in my pocket and took their best sticker.

You might think that we'd already had more fun than you could expect with charity stickers, but ten minutes later, the girls came back.

Olivia: "We thought about what you said..."

Danielle: "and it moved us."

They'd gone off and made a whole new set. Each one different, colourful and with nice pictures. I had to break a twenty.

I just hope that when these two finish school and go into the work force they continue to use their powers for good and not for evil.

Links:

• the Book Fair
• Help Lesotho