A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul Read online

  Page 24

  It Takes Courage

  You gain strength, experience and confi-

  dence by every experience where you really

  stop to look fear in the face. . . . You must do

  the thing you cannot do.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Her name is Nikki. She lives just down the road from me. I have been inspired by this young lady for a number of years. Her story has touched my heart and when times get tough, I reflect on her courage.

  It started when she was in the seventh grade, with the doctor's report. Everything that her family had feared was true. The diagnosis: leukemia. The next few months were filled with regular visits to the hospital. She was poked and jabbed and tested hundreds and thousands of times. Then came the chemotherapy. Along with it, and a chance to possibly save her life, she lost her hair. Losing your hair as a seventh grader is a devastating thing. The hair didn't grow back. The family started to worry.

  That summer before the eighth grade she bought a wig. It felt uncomfortable, it was scratchy, but she wore it. She was very popular and loved by so many students. She was a cheerleader and always had other kids around her, but things seemed to change. She

  Page 25

  looked strange, and you know how kids are. I guess maybe like the rest of us. Sometimes we go after laughter and do things even though it causes great pain in someone else. The wig was pulled off from behind about a half a dozen times in the first two weeks of the eighth grade. She would stop, bend down, shake from fear and embarrassment, put her wig back on, wipe away the tears and walk to class, always wondering why no one stood up for her.

  This went on for two agonizing, hellish weeks. She told her parents she couldn't take it anymore. They said, ''You can stay home if you wish." You see, if your daughter is dying in the eighth grade, you don't care if she makes it to the ninth. Having her happy and giving her a chance at peace is all that matters. Nikki told me that to lose her hair is nothing. She said, "I can handle that." She even said that losing her life is of little concern. "I can handle that, too," she said, "but do you know what it's like to lose your friends? To walk down the hall and have them part like the Red Sea because you're coming, to go into the cafeteria on pizza day, our best meal, and have them leave with half-eaten plates? They say that they're not hungry but you know that they're leaving because you're sitting there. Do you know what it's like to have no one want to sit next to you in math class and the kids in the locker to the left and right of you have pulled out? They're putting their books in with someone else, all because they might have to stand next to the girl wearing the wig, the one with the weird disease. It's not even catching. They can't get it from me. Don't they know that I need my friends most of all? Oh, yes," she said, "losing your life is nothing when you know that because of your belief in God you know exactly where you're going to spend eternity. Losing your hair is nothing either, but losing your friends is so devastating."

  Page 26

  She had planned to stay home from school, but something happened that weekend. She heard about two boys, one in the sixth grade, one in the seventh, and their stories gave her the courage to go on. The seventh-grader was from Arkansas and even though it wasn't popular, he took his New Testament Bible in his shirt to school. As the story goes, three boys approached him, grabbed the Bible and said, "You sissy. Religion is for sissies. Prayer is for sissies. Don't ever again bring this Bible back to school." He reportedly handed the Bible back to the biggest one of the three and said, "Here, see if you've got enough courage to carry this around school just one day." They said that he made three friends.

  The next story that inspired Nikki was a sixth-grader from Ohio named Jimmy Masterdino. He was jealous of California because California had a state motto, "Eureka!" Ohio didn't have any. He came up with six life-changing words. He single-handedly got enough signatures. With his petitions full, he took it before the State Legislature. Today, because of a brave sixth grader, the official state motto for Ohio is "All things are possible with God."

  With Nikki's new-found courage and inspiration, she put her wig on that next Monday morning. She got dressed as pretty and as fancy as she could. She told her mom and dad, "I'm going back to school today. There's something I've got to do. There's something I've got to find out." They didn't know what she meant and they were worried, fearing the worst, but they drove her to school. Every day for the last several weeks, Nikki would hug and kiss her mom and dad in the car before she got out. As unpopular as this was and even though many kids sneered and jeered at her, she never let it stop her. Today was different. She hugged and kissed them, but as she got

  Page 27

  out of the car, she turned quietly and said, "Mom and Dad, guess what I'm going to do today?" Her eyes were filling up with tears, but they were tears of joy and strength. Oh, yes, there was fear of the unknown, but she had a cause. They said, "What, baby?" She said, "Today I'm going to find out who my best friend is. Today I'm going to find out who my real friends are." And with that she grabbed the wig off her head and she set it on the seat beside her. She said, "They take me for who I am, Daddy, or they don't take me at all. I don't have much time left. I've got to find out who they are today.'' She started to walk, took two steps, then turned and said, "Pray for me." They said, "We are, baby." And as she walked toward 600 kids, she could hear her dad say, "That's my girl."

  A miracle happened that day. She walked through that playground, into that school, and not one loud-mouth or bully, no one, made fun of the little girl with all the courage.

  Nikki has taught thousands of people that to be yourself, to use your own God-given talent, and to stand up for what is right even in the midst of uncertainty, pain, fear and persecution is the only true way to live.

  Nikki has since graduated from high school. The marriage that was never supposed to take place happened a few years later, and Nikki is the proud mother of a little girl that she named after my little girl, Emily. Every time something that seems impossible comes before me, I think of Nikki and I gain strength.

  Bill Sanders

  Page 28

  Be Yourself

  In the world to come I shall not be asked,

  "Why were you not Moses?" I should be

  asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

  Rabbi Zusya

  Ever since I was a little kid, I didn't want to be me. I wanted to be like Billy Widdledon, and Billy Widdledon didn't even like me. I walked like he walked; I talked like he talked; and I signed up for the high school he signed up for.

  Which was why Billy Widdledon changed. He began to hang around Herby Vandeman; he walked like Herby Vandeman; he talked like Herby Vandeman. He mixed me up! I began to walk and talk like Billy Widdledon, who was walking and talking like Herby Vandeman.

  And then it dawned on me that Herby Vandeman walked and talked like Joey Haverlin. And Joey Haverlin walked and talked like Corky Sabinson.

  So here I am walking and talking like Billy Widdledon's imitation of Herby Vandeman's version of Joey Haverlin, trying to walk and talk like Corky Sabinson. And who do you think Corky Sabinson is always walking and talking like? Of all people, Dopey Wellingtonthat little pest who walks and talks like me!

  Author unknown, submitted by Scott Shuman

  Page 29

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  President Calvin Coolidge once invited friends from his hometown to dine at the White House. Worried about their table manners, the guests decided to do everything that Coolidge did. This strategy succeeded, until coffee was served. The president poured his coffee into the saucer. The guests did the same. Coolidge added sugar and cream. His guests did, too. Then Coolidge bent over and put his saucer on the floor for the cat.

  Erik Oleson

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  You do not have to be your mother unless she is who you want to be. You do not have to be your mother's mother, or your mother's mother's mother, or even your grandmother's mother on your father's
side. You may inherit their chins or their hips or their eyes, but you are not destined to become the women who came before you. You are not destined to live their lives. So if you inherit something, inherit their strength, their resilience. Because the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

  Pam Finger

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  When I get that championship I'm gonna put on my old jeans and get an old hat and grow a beard and I'm gonna walk down an old country road where nobody knows me till I find a pretty little fox who don't know my name, who just loves me for who I am. And then I'll take her back to my $250,000 house overlooking my million-dollar housing development, and I'll show her all my Cadillacs and the indoor pool in case it rains, and I'll tell her, "This is yours, honey, cause you love me for who I am."

  Muhammad Ali

  Page 30

  I Don't Despair about Kids Today

  Sometimes when I'm flying from one speaking engagement to another, I find myself sitting next to someone who's quite talkative. This is often a pleasant experience for me because I'm an inveterate people-watcher. I learn so much by watching and listening to the people I meet and see every day. I've heard stories of sadness and others of delight, fear and joy, and others that would rival those on "Oprah" and "Geraldo."

  Sad to say, there are times when I'm sitting next to someone who just wants to vent his spleen or inflict his political views on a captive audience for 600 miles. It was one of those days. I settled in, resignedly, as my seatmate began his disquisition on the terrible state of the world with the timeworn, "You know, kids today are . . ." He went on and on, sharing vague notions of the terrible state of teens and young adults, based on watching the six o'clock news rather selectively.

  When I gratefully disembarked that plane and finally made it to my hotel in Indianapolis, I bought the local paper and went to have dinner in the hotel. There, on an inside page, was an article I believe ought to have been the front-page headline news.

  In a little Indiana town, there was a 15-year-old boy with a brain tumor. He was undergoing radiation

  Page 31

  and chemotherapy treatments. As a result of those treatments, he had lost all of his hair. I don't know about you, but I remember how I would have felt about that at his ageI would have been mortified!

  This young man's classmates spontaneously came to the rescue: all the boys in his grade asked their mothers if they could shave their heads so that Brian wouldn't be the only bald boy in the high school. There, on that page, was a photograph of a mother shaving off all of her son's hair with the family looking on approvingly. And in the background, a group of similarly bald young men.

  No, I don't despair about kids today.

  Hanoch McCarty, Ed.D.

  Page 32

  The Flower

  "I have many flowers," he said, "but the

  children are the most beautiful flowers of

  all.

  Oscar Wilde

  For some time I have had a person provide me with a rose boutonniere to pin on the lapel of my suit every Sunday. Because I always got a flower on Sunday morning, I really did not think much of it. It was a nice gesture that I appreciated, but it became routine. One Sunday, however, what I considered ordinary became very special.

  As I was leaving the Sunday service a young man approached me. He walked right up to me and said, "Sir, what are you going to do with your flower?" At first I did not know what he was talking about, but then I understood.

  I said, "Do you mean this?" as I pointed to the rose pinned to my coat.

  He said, "Yes sir. I would like it if you are just going to throw it away." At this point I smiled and gladly told him that he could have my flower, casually asking him what he was going to do with it. The little boy, who was probably less than 10 years old, looked up at me and said, "Sir, I'm going to give it to my

  Page 33

  granny. My mother and father got divorced last year. I was living with my mother, but when she married again, she wanted me to live with my father. I lived with him for a while, but he said I could not stay, so he sent me to live with my grandmother. She is so good to me. She cooks for me and takes care of me. She has been so good to me that I want to give that pretty flower to her for loving me."

  When the little boy finished I could hardly speak. My eyes filled with tears and I knew I had been touched in the depths of my soul. I reached up and unpinned my flower. With the flower in my hand, I looked at the boy and said, "Son, that is the nicest thing I have ever heard, but you can't have this flower because it's not enough. If you'll look in front of the pulpit, you'll see a big bouquet of flowers. Different families buy them for the church each week. Please take those flowers to your granny because she deserves the very best."

  If I hadn't been touched enough already, he made one last statement and I will always cherish it. He said, "What a wonderful day! I asked for one flower but got a beautiful bouquet."

  Pastor John R. Ramsey

  Page 34

  Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

  It's an underground slogan that's spreading across the nation.

  It's a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda, Christmas presents piled high in the back, drives up to the Bay Bridge toll booth. "I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me," she says with a smile, handing over seven commuter tickets.

  One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the toll booth, dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day."

  The woman in the Honda, it turned out, had read something on an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." The phrase seemed to leap out at her, and she copied it down.

  Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall a hundred miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. "I thought it was incredibly beautiful," she said, explaining why she's taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, "like a message from above."

  Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the classroom wall for his seventh-

  Page 35

  graders, one of whom was the daughter of a local columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.

  Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. Tall, blonde and forty, Herbert lives in Marin, one of the country's ten richest counties, where she house-sits, takes odd jobs, gets by. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Herbert jotted the phrase down on a paper placemat, after turning it around in her mind for days.

  "That's wonderful!" a man sitting nearby said, and copied it down carefully on his own placemat.

  "Here's the idea," Herbert says. "Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly."

  Her own fantasies include: (1) breaking into depressing-looking schools to paint the classrooms, (2) leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor part of town, (3) slipping money into a proud old woman's purse. Says Herbert, "Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can."

  Now the phrase is spreading, on bumper stickers, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business cards. And as it spreads, so does a vision of guerrilla goodness.

  In Portland, Oregon, a man might plunk a coin into a stranger's parking meter just in time. In Paterson, New Jersey, a dozen people with pails and mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a run-down house and clean it from top to bottom while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling. In Chicago, a teenage boy may be shoveling off a driveway when the impulse strikes. What the hell, nobody's looking, he thinks, and shovels the neighbor's driveway too.

  It's positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance. A woman in Boston writes "Merry Christmas!" to the tellers on the back of her checks. A man in St. Louis, whose car has just been rear-ended by a
young