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REAL MAGIC
THE POWER OF PONGO LOVE
by Tom Terez
Sometimes life's most important lessons are taught by the most unlikely teachers.
In my case, I can thank Pongo, Melanie, and Annie.
Pongo is nine months old, weighs about four ounces, lives in a glass tank, and is
covered from head to tail with long sandy-brown hair. Yep, he's a rodent -- a so-called
teddy-bear hamster. The breed is bigger than most hamsters, fluffier, a lot slower,
and more friendly.
Melanie is eight years old, and her sister Annie is five. These are my daughters,
and they're the ones who wanted a hamster in the first place. "We'll take care
of him!" they declared when trying to sell me on the idea. "We'll do all
the hamster chores." And they have. For eight months now, they've been wonderful
friends and caregivers, making sure Pongo has food, water, and all the other hamster
necessities.
What he gets the most of, though, is love. Ever since the May day when we brought
him home from the pet store, Pongo has been cuddled, held, and hugged by Melanie
and Annie. They've taken him to school for show-and-tell. They've built him homes
out of Lincoln Logs, Legos, cardboard boxes, and wooden blocks. They've asked him
questions, told him secrets, and declared their love.
So I was about to believe anything about this extraordinary hamster -- until Melanie
told us the latest Pongo episode at breakfast one day. Very matter-of-factly, she
said, "Pongo came upstairs to my bedroom and woke me up in the middle of the
night."
My wife and I exchanged smiles. "You must have been dreaming," we said.
Unless Pongo had access to tiny rock-climbing gear, there was no way he could have
made the trek. He lives in a large glass tank on the first floor, with walls three
times his body length. The tank sits on a wooden table three feet high. There are
13 steps going upstairs. And what's the chance he'd find their bedroom?
Then Melanie made the story even more of a dream. "He was sitting on my clothes
hamper looking at me," she said. "He woke me up with his scratching."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I hugged him and carried him back down to his house," Melanie said.
"Maybe you were sleep-walking," my wife responded.
"No, really, Pongo did come upstairs and wake me up!"
Melanie kept talking about her middle-of-the-night visit from Pongo. Annie chimed
in with her own sleepy memories. My wife and I played along, happy to let the kids
believe that Pongo would indeed surmount the laws of physics on their behalf.
Three days later, after the girls had been tucked in, I made my rounds from room
to room, turning out the lights. In the room where we keep Pongo, I bent down toward
his tank. "Goodnight, Pongo," I said. Then I leaned in for a closer look.
"Pongo?" Where was that furball? "PONGO?!" I gasped. No Pongo!
I ran for my wife, and with racing hearts and sweaty palms, we got on our knees and
began looking beneath and behind everything in Pongo's room. Mercifully, the search
took less than a minute. We spotted him happily touring the carpeted space between
a bookcase and the wall. "Pongo!" we exclaimed as we started to breathe
again. He toddled out and looked at us as with a bemused quiver of his whiskers.
Then it dawned on me: Melanie's dream had been anything but. Pongo really did defy
physics. He really did scale the inside glass wall of his tank and vault three feet
to the floor and climb 13 steps and find his best friends' bedroom and somehow haul
his furry self onto the hamper. For a hamster, what's the next best thing to being
held by your loving friend? It's sitting on top of their dirty clothes.
As the truth sunk in, my wife and I looked at each other with wide eyes. So much
for our grown-up common sense. So much for our rational thinking. So much for attributing
the best things in life to dreams and fantasy. I've learned that when it comes to
love, the world is full of magic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Terez is the founder of InnerBest.com, BetterWorkplaceNow.com,
and TomTerez.com. His talks and workshops are all about helping individuals
and organizations achieve their very best. Click here to send Tom a note.
Copyright 2005 Tom Terez. |
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