“A good ending is vital to a picture, the single most important element, because it is what the audience takes with them out of the theater.”

— Walt Disney

As I drove home from work, I was all set to write a story.

I was going to write about how a cool group of daily kindness givers in Atlanta helped out a teacher right here in Portland, Oregon. I was going to tell you about how I rushed over to sparked.com and helped out the same teacher because her project was so cool.

Then my story took an unexpected turn.

I got a phone call from the mother of my son’s classmate. She was worried her daughter wasn’t home. She didn’t get off the bus.

Being a parent, the alarm bells went off immediately. I told her that I was heading to the school right away.

Ten minutes later, I walked into the school. The only kids I saw were my son and his cast mates. Fortunately, after a few minutes of looking, I found the girl curled up on a bench with a book, completely absorbed. As I approached, she looked up and smiled.

I told her the story and she took my phone to call her mother. When the girl handed back the phone, I could hear the relief in her mother’s voice. Crisis averted.

The girl, my son and I gathered everything and we laughed as we drove home together. “Mom worries too much,” she said. I told her that it was our job to worry, and we’re very good at it.

The conversation turned to other matters of pressing importance like if the next school play would be MacBeth or Mulan. That led to a discussion about the similarities between Shakespeare and Disney. (Disney didn’t kill off everyone at the end of the story like Shakespeare enjoyed doing.)

Arriving home, reunited with her daughter, the mother was more happy than embarrassed. It was all much ado about nothing.

A happy ending. Just like a Disney movie.

Helped out a teacher on sparked.com and gave a happy ending to a mother and her daughter.