No Gratitude for Magyver

Today at the zoo, we witnessed a little girl accidentally drop her portable water bottle into the rhinoceros pen. Immediately, the girl was inconsolable, even though her mother kept assuring her that it wasn't worth shedding tears over. Everyone in her family tried to reach through the bars of the fence to retrieve it, but it was just out of their grasp. (The bottle was nowhere near the animals, and there was no possibility of a person getting through the fence, so no danger.) They had given up and were about to notify the zookeeper, when I pointed out that they could fashion a hook out of a removable piece from their stroller. (I knew it was removable because we have the same stroller.) The grandpa took my suggestion, and sure enough, it worked.

The rhino isn't really the point of this story, but for what it's worth, it's my favorite part of the Baltimore zoo.
Also, a thumbnail of a rhino is an attention grabber.

Once the bottle was safe and sound, the family unanimously declared that Grandpa had saved the day. "Way to go, Grandpa!" "Our hero!" The little girl stopped crying and gave him a big hug. Someone even compared him to Magyver, for solving this difficult technical problem. Which seemed like a slap in the face, since all he'd done was what I told him to do. Meanwhile, no one said a word to me - not even a word of acknowledgment, much less thanks.

Of course, a good deed should be its own reward, but I was a little annoyed anyway. It was such an otherwise-satisfying moment of ingenuity (if I do say so myself), and, for this predominantly right-brained thinker, kind of a rare one. Plus, some basic gratitude feels nice - even if you're just holding a door, or letting another car in on a busy street.

It's more than a little shameless to openly fish for accolades in reaction to a relatively trivial moment that no one even witnessed, other than my wife and almost-two-year-old twins (who seemed indifferent). But hey, I'm not above accepting them. I'm still pretty proud of myself.