Jessica is a respected contributor to the Sampling America writing team, eloquently sharing tales of adventures across the country and beyond.
“Ahh! This is the best day ever!” shouts a delighted little girl as she rifles through a treasure chest found on the beach in a recent viral video.
The girl has no idea that it was actually her parents that buried the treasure there instead of pirates, but that is half the fun. The parents, who knew it was their daughter’s dream to find a treasure chest, look on (and, obviously, record) as she digs through the sand until she strikes gold.
“I found something!” she cries, getting more and more excited with every passing second. She can hardly contain herself as she unearths a real, bona fide treasure chest and holds it up for her mom — who had been pretending not to believe her up to this point — to see.
She then hurriedly opens the box and is ecstatic to see that it is filled with seashells. At first, she doesn’t even notice the coins at the bottom, but once she does, she is blown away, shouting that it is the best day of her life.
Commenters on the video immediately melted at the pure joy in the girl’s voice and on her face. In a world where it seems like there is more bad news than good, this is the kind of video people want to see. As u/boazba puts it: “That’s the most genuinely pure thing I’ve seen in a while.”
It also got viewers reminiscing about their own childhood, revealing that, as happy as the girl in the video is now, she will be even happier years from now when she realizes her parents were the ones to bury that treasure there for her. As u/jeffbrock puts it: “20 years from now, this girl will just be going about her day, when realization will strike…. ‘Heeeeeyyyy….wait a minute!’”
Parents who go out of their way to add whimsy and magic to their kids’ lives are the best kind of parents, they say, and the world could definitely use more of them.
So, if you are looking for ways to make your child happy on your next beach vacation, consider hiding a special surprise in the sand for him or her to find. If your child is anything like the one in this video, it will be a memory they will treasure forever.