With so much sadness in the world right now, I thought I’d share with you one of the most wonderful stories I’ve read this week: a man made a real-life Where’s Waldo game for sick kids to play while in the hospital.
Yup. A REAL-LIFE Where’s Waldo game!!
My faith in humanity is now restored.
According to CNN, foreman Jason Haney is currently working on an expansion project for Memorial Children’s Hospital in South Bend, Indiana. And, as many of us know, hospitals are absolutely terrifying places for anyone, but especially for kids. So Mr. Haney came up with the most BRILLIANT idea for cheering up the young patients and keeping them entertained: he and his daughter made an 8-foot cutout of Waldo and moves him to different spots around the work site for the kids to find. Once they find Waldo, Mr. Haney moves the cutout to a different place and the kids look again.
Some of the hiding spots are easy:
And some are HARD. Like, “I’m-still-looking-at-this-while-I’m-writing-this-post” hard:
So yeah, YOU try finding him.
He even made a Facebook group where people can post their photos of Waldo and see where other people have spotted him. And the kids have been absolutely LOVING this game! He told CNN:
“When I go up to the hospital to visit the children, a hospital worker told a little girl I was the man who built Waldo. She was so excited. ‘You’re the guy who made Waldo? Thank you so much!’ Let’s just say I’m glad I had sunglasses on. Seeing the kids’ reactions even for a little bit and knowing that for that brief moment they’re not concerned with what’s going on makes it all worth it.”
Seriously, though. It’s stories like these that not only make us feel okay about the world, but also make us realize that we ALL have talents we can use to help others.
What are yours? How do you use those powers for good? The cool part about this story was that Mr. Haney got his daughter to help him out with this. Are your kids involved in any community service projects? Do you guys do them together?
