(bright music) - So summer's just around the corner.

It's technically still spring, even with that heat.

It's June 20th this year, so be on the lookout.

As seasons change, as time is made visible before us, I start reflecting, which really means overthinking.

Summer was always a time of change for me.

I was a military brat so every couple summers we would move.

It never got easier.

I would start at a new school and I'd be the new kid, the outsider again.

And it was like the kid I had been for the past couple years didn't exist.

All the in-jokes with friends, all the goodwill built up with teachers, gone, like it wasn't ever there.

I became cynical, pessimistic, depressed.

Nothing I did felt permanent or meaningful.

The summer before third grade we PCSed from Elmendorf down to McConnell, which for the civilians in the crowd means Alaska down to Kansas.

We drove two kids, two cats through the Canadian wild.

Around Edmonton we stopped at a hotel.

While my parents went to check in, my sister and I launched roller bags at each other in the parking lot.

They were taking a long time and we were very bruised and we finally went to go see what was taking them so long.

My dad was talking to this older gentleman who was waiting alone in the lobby.

The gentleman was telling him about his wife who was in the hospital nearby.

He talked for some time and then almost out of nowhere, like he was just noticing us, he looked at me and my sister and he took out his wallet and he gave us each a Canadian $5 bill.

Out of nowhere.

Just handed it to us.

I really don't know why but it was the weirdest, kindest thing a stranger had ever done.

Many years later on the drive back from college one summer I stopped at a rest station travel plaza.

It was off I-75 somewhere in West Virginia, I wanna say.

Inside they had fast food restaurants, nice clean bathrooms, and a gift shop that sold cheap Appalachian souvenirs like key chains and sweatshirts and moonshine.

I picked out a postcard for my sister, a landscape of the mountains, and then I went to go check out and I saw tacked onto the register an origami butterfly made from a $5 bill, American, not Canadian.

And I pointed to it and I said, "Oh, that's cute."

Just trying to make conversation.

The clerk said, "This guy made it for us while his wife shopped forever ago, years and years."

I was shocked.

Years?

It had been there for years and they hadn't used it.

It shouldn't, it really shouldn't have surprised me because I do still have this, I still have the Canadian $5 bill.

I keep it in my wallet.

Both of these interactions were quick and partial, both during a period of transition, but they meant something, of course they did.

Maybe nothing is permanent.

Maybe I'll always be the new kid, the outsider.

But meaning can be found anywhere.

I look around and I see goodness and beauty everywhere, and the best part is each interaction begets more beauty and more goodness.

And in this way, maybe kindness is our only real currency.

That and $5 bills.

Happy summer.

Thank you.

(audience applauds)