A Simple Hello
I have always felt sympathy and compassion for the kids I see at school walking all alone, for the ones who sit in the back of the room while everyone snickers and makes fun of them. But I never did anything about it. I guess I figured that someone else would. I did not take the time to really think about the depth of their pain. Then one day I thought, What if I did take a moment out of my busy schedule to simply say hello to someone without a friend or stop and chat with someone eating by herself? And I did. It felt good to brighten up someone else's life. How did I know I did? Because I remembered the day a simple kind hello changed my life forever.
Katie E. Houston
Night Watch
Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
Erich Fromm
'Your son is here,' the nurse said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the man's eyes opened. He was heavily sedated and only partially conscious after a massive heart attack he had suffered the night before. He could see the dim outline of a young man in a U.S. Marine Corps uniform, standing alongside his bed.
The old man reached out his hand. The marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man's limp hand and squeezed gently. The nurse brought a chair, and the tired serviceman sat down at the bedside.
All through the night, the young marine sat in the poorly lighted ward, holding the old man's hand and offering words of encouragement. The dying man said nothing, but kept a feeble grip on the young man's hand. Oblivious to the noise of the oxygen tank, the moans of the other patients, and the bustle of the night staff coming in and out of the ward, the marine remained at the old man's side.
Every now and then, when she stopped by to check on her patients, the nurse heard the young marine whisper a few comforting words to the old man. Several times in the course of that long night, she returned and suggested that the marine leave to rest for a while. But every time, the young man refused.
Near dawn the old man died. The marine placed the old man's lifeless hand on the bed and left to find the nurse. While the nurse took the old man away and attended to the necessary duties, the young man waited. When the nurse returned, she began to offer words of sympathy, but the marine interrupted her.
'Who was that man?' he asked.
Startled, the nurse replied, 'He was your father.'
'No, he wasn't,' the young man said. 'I've never seen him before in my life.'
'Then why didn't you say something when I took you to him?'
'I knew there had been a mistake by the people who sent me home on an emergency furlough. What happened was, there were two of us with the same name, from the same town, and we had similar serial numbers. They sent me by mistake,' the young man explained. 'But I also knew he needed his son, and his son wasn't there. I could tell he was too sick to know whether I was his son or not. When I realized how much he needed to have someone there, I just decided to stay.'
Roy Popkin
Winning Isn't Everything
Great competitors are bred, and great sportsmen are born. I came to that conclusion at a Little League T-ball game in Davis, California, for which my son, Matt, was umpiring. This conclusion was cemented solidly just last week when a friend of mine related a horror story from her son's Little League game.
'One of the coaches just ripped off a kid's head for making a mistake,' she noted. 'What does that teach him?'
In both of our books, nothing.
We have become a nation addicted to winning. 'We're number one' puts smiles on sports fans' faces. Running a good race doesn't always.
This premise relates to every facet of life, whether at home, at church, at school, at work, or at play. Numbers are crunched; awards are pursued; emotions are stifled in favor of one-upmanship. Even the Joneses have a hard time keeping up.
Life too often becomes a tough game with more losers than winners. When claiming the prize eliminates the good in playing, no one wins. Real rewards come from teamwork and playing the game unselfishly for the good of the whole.
On a hot, sunny afternoon, a small boy stepped up to bat. The crowd watched like hawks for his move, waiting for the sought-after home run that most likely wasn't to be. After all, these kids were five and six years old, much too little to stroke a ball past the pitcher, if at all.
The little guy's determination showed in his stance: gritted teeth, slightly bulging eyes, hat-clad head bobbing slightly, feet apart, hands with a death grip on the bat. In front of him was a small softball, sitting perched like a parrot on a lone tee, awaiting the six swings that the batter was allowed.
Strike one.
'Come on, you can do it!' came a solitary voice out of the bleachers.
Strike two.
'Go for it, son!' the proud father yelled encouragingly.
Strike three.
'Go, go, go . . .' the crowd joined in.
Strike four.
'You can do it!' just the father and a couple of viewers crooned, others losing interest and turning to bleacher conversations.
'YOU CAN DO IT!' And suddenly bat hit ball, amazing the crowd and the little boy, who stood rock still, watching it travel slowly past the pitcher on its way to second base.
'Run!'
The stands rumbled with stomping feet.
'Run, run!'
The little boy's head jerked ever so slightly and he took off toward third base.
'No!' the crowd yelled. 'The other way!'
With a slight cast of his head toward the bleachers, the boy turned back toward home.
'NO!' My son, the umpire, waved him toward first base.
The kids on both teams pointed the way. The crowd continued to cheer him on. Confused, he ran back to third. Then following the third baseman's frantic directions, he finally ran toward first base, but stopped triumphantly on the pitcher's mound. The pitcher moved back, not sure what to do next. The crowd stood, shaking the bleachers with the momentum. All arms waved toward first base. And with no thought for his position, the first baseman dropped his ball and ran toward the pitcher.
'Come on,' he yelled, grabbing the hand of the errant batter and tugging him toward first base while the crowd screamed its approval. The ball lay forgotten as a triumphant twosome hugged each other on the piece of square plastic that marked the spot where lives are forever shaped.
Two little boys, running hand in hand, toward a goal that only one should have reached. Both came out winners. In fact, there wasn't a loser in the stands or on the field that summer day, and that's a lesson none of us should ever forget.
Winning is more than being number one. Winning is helping another when the chips are down. It's remembering to love one another, as biblically directed, despite the flaws that sometimes appear in the fabric of daily life.
No one will ever remember the score of that summer afternoon encounter. Competition, usually fettered by jeering remands, lost to sportsmanship, an innate formula for winning.
When you get to first base with opposing teammates, families, friends, and grandstanders behind you, a home run is never that far down the road.
Mary Owen
I'll Get Another One
At his father's funeral, American Carl Lewis placed his one-hundred-meter gold medal from the 1984 Olympics in his father's hands. 'Don't worry,' he told his surprised mother. 'I'll get another one.'
A year later, in the one-hundred-meter final at the 1988 games, Lewis was competing against Canadian world-record-holder Ben Johnson. Halfway through the race, Johnson was five feet in front. Lewis was convinced he could catch him. But at eighty meters, he was still five feet behind. It's over, Dad, Lewis thought. As Johnson crossed the finish, he stared back at Lewis and thrust his right arm in the air, index finger extended.
Lewis was exasperated. He had noticed Johnson's bulging muscles and yellow-tinged eyes, both indications of steroid use. 'I didn't have the medal, but I could still give to my father by acting with class and dignity,' Lewis said later. He shook Johnson's hand and left the track.
But then came the announcement that Johnson had tested positive for anabolic steroids. He was stripped of his medal. The gold went to Lewis, a replacement for the medal he had given his father.
David Wallechinsky
©2008. Katie E. Houston, Roy Popkin, Mary Owen, and David Wallechinsky . All rights reserved. Reprinted from Chicken Soup for the Soul in the Classroom - High School Edition by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Anna Unkovich. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street , Deerfield Beach , FL 33442.
