Chicken Soup for the Girl's Soul Read online

  I weighed just two pounds, six ounces!

  What was even scarier was that the hospital where I was born didn’t have a neonatal intensive care unit, so a medical team of specialists had to fly in from the nearest biggest city to deliver me. Then hours later, they flew me back with them to their NICU while my dad stayed behind, because my mom had to remain in the intensive care unit for another three days.

  When I was born, the chances that I would survive were small—as small as I was—but one of the doctors who delivered me told my dad that night, “Your daughter is a fighter.”

  I guess he was right. I guess I am. Indeed, sometimes when I’m facing a challenge, I think about those words, “Your daughter is a fighter,” and it gives me strength. My personal mantra when things get tough, like in the late stages of a cross-country, or when I climbed Mount Whitney this past summer, has become “PAST”— Preemies Are So Tough. Indeed, I am proud to be a “preemie.” It makes me feel special.

  Not that it has always been easy. It’s funny now, but until I was about ten, having my toenails clipped was so traumatizing it would bring me to tears. I still don’t like anyone touching my feet. A NICU nurse recently told me it is common for preemies to subconsciously remember having their heels constantly used as pincushions to draw blood samples, so it makes sense.

  There were also IV needles stuck into my scalp, feeding tubes forced down my nose and monitors attached to my chest. I even had to be on a respirator while my tiny lungs completed forming.

  The first month was especially touch-and-go. I owe my life to the dedicated doctors and nurses who cared for me during that precarious period, and I will always be grateful to them.

  After spending ten weeks in the hospital, I finally got to come home. I was still so small and frail—not quite five pounds yet—that my parents had to buy Cabbage Patch doll clothes to dress me, because no company made baby clothes tiny enough to fit me.

  It took a long time for me to catch up. I didn’t grow any hair until I was over a year old. My parents say that even when I was wearing pink, people always thought I was a boy. I’m happy to say that doesn’t happen any longer, and I have school dance pictures to prove it.

  More seriously, my little lungs remained susceptible to bronchitis. Even when I started kindergarten, I still seemed to always have a bad cough and asthma.

  But wait, my story isn’t over. The miracle didn’t end with just my survival. Hit the fast-forward button.

  That tiny sickly baby in the picture has accomplished big things. People can hardly believe that I was a preemie when I tell them. You see, I am a perfectly healthy sixteen-year-old high school junior with no lasting effects of my precarious start in life. In addition to lettering in basketball, cross-country running and track, I am a straight-A student. I’m involved in the student body, and I even wrote the play my school’s drama department put on this past year. And, this is the part most people can’t believe: I am now five feet, ten inches tall! Yes, I have come a long way from the teddy bear-sized baby in the picture.

  My dad says I was a preemie because I couldn’t wait to get started doing all the things I want to do in my life. Maybe he’s right. After all, I have already written, self-published and sold more than 700 copies of a book. While both the Los Angeles Times and Girl’s Life Magazine gave it good reviews, I am the first to admit it can’t compare to my real storybook life to date.

  I try to use my frightening premature birth as an inspiration and benefit. Every year on my birthday, my dad and I visit the neonatal intensive care unit. It not only makes me appreciate how wonderfully blessed I have been, but it gives the tearful mothers and fathers of preemies who I am visiting hope that words from a doctor can’t. Hope that their tiny, sickly babies can grow up to be the tallest in their classes, that their tiny lungs can someday be strong enough to win a ribbon in a 400-meter dash or finish a 5K race, that their fragile legs may one day carry them to the top of Mount Whitney, or that their GI Joe or Barbie doll-sized hands will one day be able to hold a pencil, shoot a basketball and swing a bat. Hope that their little tiny baby will grow up like I did and accomplish big things.

  My personal hope for them is that PAST will become their child’s mantra too as they grow up to have a big, bright future of rainbows and roses, ice cream cones and Ferris wheels, four-leaf clovers and proms, just like the teddy bear-sized girl in the picture—the girl who is now a young woman and not sickly anymore.

  Dallas Nicole Woodburn, 16

  Call Me

  Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  “I know it’s here somewhere.”

  I dropped my book bag to dig through my coat pockets. When I dumped my purse out onto the table, everyone waiting in line behind me groaned. I glanced up at the lunchroom clock. Only three minutes until the bell, and it was the last day to order a class memory book if you wanted your name printed on the front. I did, but for some reason, I couldn’t find my wallet. The line began to move around me.

  “Come on, Cindy!” Darcy might as well have stamped her foot, she sounded so impatient. “We’ll be late for class.”

  “Darcy, please!” I snapped back. Even though we were best friends, Darcy and I often frustrated each other. We were just so different. Darcy had “budgeted” for her memory book and ordered it the first day of school, while I had almost forgotten . . . again.

  “Darcy, my wallet’s gone.” I threw my things back into my purse. “My memory book money was in it.”

  “Someone took it.” Darcy, as usual, was quick to point away from the bright side of things.

  “Oh, I’m sure I just misplaced it,” I hoped.

  We rushed into class just before the second bell. Darcy took center stage to my problem and happily spread the news about the theft. By last period in gym class, I was tired of being stopped and having to say over and over again, “I’m sure I just left it at home.” Rushing late into the locker room, I changed then ran to catch up with my soccer team.

  The game was a close one, and our team was the last one back into the locker room. Darcy was waiting for me as impatiently as always. She brushed past the new girl, Juanita, to hurry me along.

  I turned my back on her to open my locker. “Darcy, I know, I know, we have to go.”

  There was a gasp behind me, and when I looked back at Darcy, her face was white with shock. There, at her feet, was my wallet.

  “It fell out of her locker!” Darcy pointed at Juanita. “She stole it.”

  Everyone took up the accusation at once.

  “That new girl stole it.”

  “Darcy caught her red-handed.”

  “I knew there was something about her.”

  “Report her!”

  I looked over at Juanita. I had never really noticed her before, beyond her “new girl” label. Juanita picked up the wallet and held it out to me. Her hands were trembling. “I found it in the parking lot. I was going to give it to you before gym, but you were late.”

  Darcy practically spit the words “I’m so sure!” at her.

  “Really, it’s true.” Juanita’s eyes began to fill with tears.

  I reached for my wallet. I didn’t know what to think, but when I looked over at Darcy, her smugness made me feel sick inside. I looked at Juanita. She was scared but looked sincere. I knew I held her reputation in my hands.

  “I am so glad you found it,” I smiled. “Thanks, Juanita.”

  The tension around us broke.

  “Good thing she found it,” everyone but Darcy agreed.

  I changed quickly. “Come on, Darcy, there’s just enough time to order my book.”

  “If there is any money left in your wallet.”

  “Not now, Darcy!”

  “You are so naive!”

  It wasn’t until we were standing in line that I opened my wallet.

  “It’s all here.” I couldn’t help but feel relieved. A folded piece of p
aper fluttered from my wallet. Darcy bent down to pick it up and handed it to me. I opened it to see what it was.

  “She just didn’t have time to empty it yet,” Darcy scoffed. “I know her type. I had her number the first day she came.”

  “You had her number, all right. Well, I have it now, too.”

  “It’s about time,” Darcy huffed.

  “Maybe that’s the problem, Darcy. Maybe you spend too much time numbering people.”

  Darcy grabbed the note, read it and threw it back at me.

  “Whatever!” she said and stomped off. I knew that something had broken between us.

  I read the note again.

  Cindy,

  I found your wallet in the parking lot. Hope nothing is missing.

  Juanita

  P.S. My phone number is 555-3218. Maybe you could call me sometime.

  And I did.

  Cynthia M. Hamond

  NO RODEO ®

  NO RODEO. © Robert Berardi. Used by permission.

  The Slam Book

  When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  I stared at the page so hard I thought my eyes would pop out. There was my name, and scrawled right underneath it the words “The Mop.” My heart pounded, my face and ears burned red hot. I wanted to run, hide, anything to get away from the destructive words of this cruel creation by some of my classmates. They called it the “Slam” book.

  I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being thirteen, living in a new town, going to a new school, trying to make new friends and then having some unknown person write this in a book for everybody to read.

  I’d watched during math class as the black book circulated from desk to desk. Each time the teacher turned toward the blackboard, the book was swiftly passed to the next person and hidden until it could be opened, read and written in. When it landed on my desk, I opened it and saw the vicious anonymous comments scribbled across each page.

  Who are these people? Why would someone say these things? “Barbara—The Mop.” I’d only been at the school a month. I didn’t even know them. My fragile confidence was shattered. I’d tried to make new friends, but it hadn’t been easy. It was a small town, and they’d all known each other for years. I wondered, Will I ever fit in?

  I turned the pages to other names. Amanda, “conceited, big lips, hairy eyebrows.” I thought she was nice and even pretty. Courtney, “witch’s pointed nose, thick glasses.” I was just getting to know Courtney. She lived around the corner from me, and we walked to school some mornings. She was kind to me and had a good sense of humor.

  I hated school for the next few days and did whatever I could to not be noticed. But that didn’t last long. It couldn’t. The vicious book kept circulating and gathering more anonymous slander. Somehow I knew the cycle had to be stopped—but how? Determining right from wrong is usually not all that difficult. The scary part is doing it, and I had to dig deep to muster my courage. I wasn’t all that brave.

  I didn’t tell the teachers or rant and rave at the students, although I wanted to scream at a few. Instead, I did the only thing I could do—I refused to participate.

  “No,” I stammered, pulse racing. “I won’t read it, and I won’t write in it,” I said the next time the book came my way. The boys mocked anyone, especially a newcomer, who refused to participate. Standing alone against them took all the courage I had, at a time when I needed friends.

  Suddenly, I noticed other girls saying no, and one even ripped out the page with her name on it. Finally, when all the girls refused and there wasn’t an audience, the book faded away into oblivion. The old saying, “If you extinguish the reward, you extinguish the behavior” proved true. We eliminated the reward.

  There was, however, another lesson I learned from this experience—one that proved more valuable than just affirming right from wrong. I learned to make up my own mind about people. I learned to understand and welcome their differences, to not accept someone else’s shallow criticisms or petty observations, but to see people for who they really are.

  Amanda was proud of her full mouth, thick dark eyebrows and olive skin, all of which were beautiful attributes of her Italian heritage. Courtney’s poor vision didn’t diminish her wit and intelligence. She made me laugh, and eventually we became best friends.

  And as for me; I learned to laugh when “The Mop” stayed with me as a nickname. I looked at my tangle of naturally curly hair that wanted to go its own way and eventually came to love it. It wasn’t going to be tamed, and neither was I.

  The “Slam” book showed up another year, but its history was short lived, and its impact minimal. The girls refused to be intimidated, refused to participate, and the reward was once again extinguished.

  Barbara J. Ragsdale

  Compassion for a Bully

  There is always time to make right what is wrong.

  Susan Griffin

  My sixth-grade year was one of confusion, intimidation, strength and friendship. There was a girl in my class named Krista. She was taller than me and very skinny, with bony arms and legs. I remember her beady brown eyes and the hard look on her face. Krista didn’t like me. In fact, I think she hated me. I was always the smallest in the class and maybe that made me easy to pick on. She would say, “C’mon, little girl, show me what you got! Or are you scared? No one likes you, little girl.”

  I tried to act like it didn’t bother me and walk away. Sometimes it would just get to me, and I would say, “Stop it!” I definitely didn’t want her to see me crying in the bathroom. As the year went on, Krista began to get more aggressive. She started coming up to me and punching me in the arm with her bony knuckles. My friends told me to ignore her as we walked away. But those punches hurt. Why me? What did she have against me? I had never done anything to invite this kind of behavior.

  One day at recess, I decided to face the bully. I had been imagining this moment for weeks. Oh, how good it would feel to punch her back. I wanted to show her that I wasn’t scared. So right as the bell was about to ring, I went up to Krista and kicked her in the leg, and then ran as fast as I could into the classroom. I was safe with the teacher in the room. But Krista beamed an evil look my way and said, “Be scared. I’ll get you later.”

  I worked hard at avoiding her the rest of the year. I remember telling my mom about it, and her consoling me with open arms and kind words. She said, “Nobody can tell you how little you are—you decide how big you will be.” I really liked that saying. I would say it in my head often and find strength in these words. Krista continued to punch my arm periodically, but eventually it slowed down. But the thought of Krista and her torment didn’t die so quickly in my mind.

  A year later, in seventh grade, I received a letter from my temple letting me know the date of my Bat Mitzvah, the biggest day of my youth. Then I read who my partner would be for this special occasion. KRISTA. How could this be? I would stand in front of family and friends and read from the Torah, become a woman and share this moment on the pulpit with Krista? She was the source of all my anxiety and insecurity and yet this day was supposed to show my strength, pride and wisdom. I was supposed to become an adult. And she would be there, waiting to belittle me. It wasn’t fair.

  I practiced my portion for months and planned a wonderful reception. I tried to put the thought of Krista out of my head. When the day came that Krista and I saw each other for the first time in a year, we both acted civil. I could tell she wasn’t pleased either. Of course, she couldn’t punch me in the temple.

  I was all dressed up, standing before a huge audience, wanting so much for things to go smoothly, especially in front of Krista. I would have died if I messed up in front of all these people and then had to deal with the laughing and teasing of this bully. I imagined all the names she would call me.

  When I read my Torah portion and my speech, I read loudly and confidently. I knew it well. I had practiced
long and hard. I saw my friends and family smiling to me, and I focused just on them.

  Then Krista came up. She was shaking. I was shocked at how nervous and scared the bully seemed. I had never seen that side of Krista. She was always so strong. But as I watched her fumble through words and chants, I saw this tough girl become weak, flawed and human. I hadn’t thought of Krista as human and emotional. As she sat back down in her seat, she quietly cried in her hands. I suddenly felt something that I never imagined feeling toward Krista—compassion. I had always dreamed of the day I could laugh in her face and make her feel as little as she made me feel. But now that the day was really here, I didn’t want to anymore. I sat down next to the sad girl, as her hands remained over her eyes.

  “I know I messed up; you don’t need to gloat. Go away!” she said.

  “You were nervous. Everyone understands. No one remembers the mistakes. They love you and will focus on all the good. That’s what family and friends do,” I told her.

  “Not my family. They love to tell me my mistakes,” she answered. And then it made sense to me. This is why she was a bully. This is all she knew.

  I put my hand on her shoulder and told her again that she did great. She could barely look me in the eyes, and then she whispered, “Thank you. I don’t know why you are being so nice; I was never nice to you.”

  “I know. But it is in the past; it’s over.”

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said. I smiled and gave her my forgiveness. I told her what my mom had told me the year before, “Nobody can tell you how little you are—you decide how big you will be.” Hopefully, those words gave her the strength that they gave me.

  I truly believe I became an adult that day.