On Saturday I was walking with my 7-year-old son in the parking lot of a pool club. On the gravel-grass hill was a small purse, not really a purse but a small vinyl bag with a zipper. It looked a little like a pencil case kids use in school and was brown and had a paisley pattern. It is the sort of thing one brings to a pool when one doesn’t want to bring a pocketbook. My arms were full with pool gear, so I told my son to pick it up.

My son had questions — he always has questions. I explained that someone probably dropped it in the parking lot and that I was going to give it to the staff person at the entrance to the club (“club” might be misleading; we’re not talking about a fancy place with a golf course and an expensive restaurant — we’re talking about a township pool that charges a low summer membership fee).

As we approached the gate, I saw an elderly woman and her friend. She was digging through her bag, one of those backpacks on wheels with a long handle like the kids use for school once the textbooks start to weigh too much to carry on their backs. I quickly opened the purse and saw that inside was some cash and a pool membership card.

I approached the women and addressed the one who was searching her bag. “Are you Beatrice?” (Yes, she was that old.) She was Beatrice, and thanked me profusely for finding and returning her purse. She joked that she was surprised that I recognized her from her photo on the card because it was an old photo and she wasn’t as young anymore, and I joked back that she looked young to me, that the photo was a perfect match. She was truly grateful.

My son and I entered the club and he looked up at me and said, “You’re a hero.” Of course, I wasn’t a hero. I found a purse and gave it back to its owner. That isn’t heroic. I told my son as much. I had just done the right thing, what people are supposed to do. It was an easy thing to do. It wasn’t heroic. It was decent. Not that we should minimize decency. Maybe in some places it’s in short supply.

I think or at least like to think that what I did is what most people would do in most places. I think most people would pick up the purse and make the little bit of effort to return it to its rightful owner. Most people would at least hand it to the staff person at the entrance to the club. Some people might not have seen the purse in the first place — it was brown and could easily be missed — so maybe I deserve some credit for having good eyes. I suppose a few might see it and keep walking without picking it up, either out of not wanting to be bothered or being in a rush or, as sometimes happens, just not thinking. And maybe some — I hope not many — would have picked it up and taken what little money was inside for themselves.

But as I said, I think that most would do exactly what I did, even if not everyone would have been so charming in bantering with Beatrice. Not everyone is blessed with charm. As for heroics, there weren’t any that day. I’m no Atticus Finch. Still, the incident, minor as it was, made an impression on my son. He saw that this woman was relieved. This old woman was smiling and happy and it was because of something I, his father, did. I saved the day for her, so to him I was a hero. And he said “You’re a hero” with a tone and the kind of admiration and surprise that only a child can muster.

I know that I would have done the same thing if I were alone that I did when my son was with me. It’s the sort of thing I’ve done before. It’s the sort of thing most people have done before. So I wasn’t acting differently because I was trying to set an example for him. Yet set an example I did, because I am his father and setting examples is part of the job.

All of this made me think of To Kill a Mockingbird, because on the same Saturday, an hour or so before I left to take my son to the pool, I commented on Frank Wilson’s post, at his blog Books, Inq., about the novel. It was part of a lively discussion about literature, but one point I made there in more detail than I will make here is that literature that shows us that people can make good choices is not something we should dismiss as “simple.” Also, I noted that readers are seeing Atticus Finch, the novel’s heroic lawyer and father, through the eyes of his daughter Scout, the first-person narrator, and that one would expect that her view of him would not be morally ambiguous. Many other points were made, by me and others, for those readers interested in debating the canon, Flannery O’Connor, the purpose of literature, Harper Lee’s novel, and more. But the clear connections between our little pool episode and To Kill a Mockingbird are the way children view what their parents do — the kind of impression it makes — and the importance of everyday decency and doing the right thing.

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