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1.Step, Step, Roar
A little boy walked down the aisle at a wedding. As he made his way to the front, he would take two steps, then stop, and turn to the crowd, alternating between the bride’s side and the groom’s side. While facing the crowd, he would put his hands up like claws and roar. And so it went -- step, step, ROAR, step, step, ROAR -- all the way down the aisle.
As you can imagine, the crowd was near tears from laughing so hard by the time he reached the pulpit. The little boy, however, was getting more and more distressed from all the laughing, and he was near tears by the time he reached the pulpit.
When asked what he was doing, the child sniffed back his tears and said, “I was being the ring bear.”
2.Step, Step, Roar
A little boy walked down the aisle at a wedding. As he made his way to the front, he would take two steps, then stop, and turn to the crowd, alternating between the bride’s side and the groom’s side. While facing the crowd, he would put his hands up like claws and roar. And so it went -- step, step, ROAR, step, step, ROAR -- all the way down the aisle.
As you can imagine, the crowd was near tears from laughing so hard by the time he reached the pulpit. The little boy, however, was getting more and more distressed from all the laughing, and he was near tears by the time he reached the pulpit.
When asked what he was doing, the child sniffed back his tears and said, “I was being the ring bear.”
3.The Cat Lady
I have lived in my neighborhood for twenty years. It seems to me that I’ve spent at least ten of those years looking for a lost pet, either mine or one I’d seen listed in the newspaper’s lost-pet column.
Recently, I was at it again, going door-to-door looking for one of my own lost kitties, a little black cat named Nicholas who’d slipped out the door before I could stop him. I made my rounds, visiting with all the neighbors, describing Nicholas. Familiar with this routine, everyone promised to keep an eye out and call me if they spotted him.
Two blocks from my house, I noticed a gentleman raking leaves in the yard of a home that had recently been sold. I introduced myself and presented my new neighbor with the plight of the missing Nicholas, asking if he had seen him.
“No,” he replied, “I’ve not seen a little black kitty around here.” He thought for a moment, looked at me and said, “But I know who you should ask. Several of my neighbors have told me that there’s a woman in the neighborhood who’s crazy about cats. They say she knows every cat around here, probably has dozens herself. They call her ‘The Cat Lady.’ Be sure to check with her.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said eagerly. “Do you know where she lives?”
He pointed a finger down the street, “It’s that one.”
I followed his finger and started to laugh.
He was pointing at my house!
4.She Told Me It Was Okay to Cry
I saw her last night for the first time in years. She was miserable. She had bleached her hair, trying to hide its true color, just as her rough front hid her deep unhappiness. She needed to talk, so we went for a walk. While I thought about my future, the college applications that had recently arrived, she thought about her past, the home she had recently left. Then she spoke. She told me about her love -- and I saw a dependent relationship with a dominating man. She told me about the drugs -- and I saw that they were her escape. She told me about her goals -- and I saw unrealistic material dreams. She told me she needed a friend -- and I saw hope, because at least I could give her that.
We had met in the second grade. She was missing a tooth, I was missing my friends. I had just moved across the continent to find cold metal swings and cold smirking faces outside the foreboding doors of P.S. 174, my new school. I asked her if I could see her Archie comic book, even though I didn’t really like comics; she said yes, even though she didn’t really like to share. Maybe we were both looking for a smile. And we found it. We found someone to giggle with late at night, someone to slurp hot chocolate with on the cold winter days when school was canceled and we would sit together by the bay window, watching the snow endlessly falling.
In the summer, at the pool, I got stung by a bee. She held my hand and told me that she was there and that it was okay to cry -- so I did. In the fall, we raked the leaves into piles and took turns jumping, never afraid because we knew that the multicolored bed would break our fall.
Only now, she had fallen and there was no one to catch her. We hadn’t spoken in months, we hadn’t seen each other in years. I had moved to California, she had moved out of the house. Our experiences were miles apart, making our hearts much father away from each other than the continent she had just traversed. Through her words I was alienated, but through her eyes I felt her yearning. She needed support in her search for strength and a new start. She needed my friendship now more than ever. So I took her hand and told her that I was there and that it was okay to cry -- so she did.
5.There Is an Oz
They arrive exactly at 8:00 a.m. to take her home, but she has been ready since before seven. She has taken a shower -- not an easy task lying down on a shower stretcher. She isn’t allowed to sit up yet without her body brace, but regardless, here she is, clean and freshly scrubbed and ever so anxious to go home. It has been two-and-a-half months since she has seen her home -- two-and-a-half months since the car accident. It doesn’t matter that she is going home in a wheelchair or that her legs don’t work. All she knows is that she is going home, and home will make everything okay. Even Dorothy says so: “Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!” It’s her favorite movie.
As they put her in the car, she thinks now of how much her father reminds her of the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Like the scarecrow, he is built in pieces of many different things -- strength, courage and love. Especially love.
He isn’t an elegant man. Her father is tall and lanky and has dirt under his fingernails from working outside. He is strictly blue collar -- a laborer. He never went to college, didn’t even go to high school. By the world’s standards he isn’t “educated.” An awful lot like the scarecrow -- but she knows differently. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does, she knows it is worth remembering. Even worth writing down. But she never has to write down anything that her father says because she knows she’ll never forget.
It is hard for her to sit comfortably while wearing the body brace and so she sits, still and unnatural, staring out the window. Her face is tense and tired and older somehow, much older than her seventeen years. She doesn’t even remember the world of a seventeen-year-old girl -- it’s as if that world never was. And she thinks she knows what Dorothy must have meant when she said, “Oh, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” It is more than an issue of geography, she is quite certain.
They pull out onto the road to begin their journey and approach the stop sign at the corner. The stop sign is just a formality; no one ever stops here. Today, however, is different. As he goes to coast through the intersection, she is instantly alert, the face alive and the eyes flashing. She grips the sides of the seat. “Stop! That’s a stop sign! You could get us killed! Don’t you know that?” And then, more quietly and with even more intensity, “You don’t know what it’s like -- you have never been there.” He looks at her and says nothing. The scarecrow and Dorothy journey onward.
As they continue to drive, her mind is constantly at work. She still hasn’t loosened her grip on the seat. She thinks of the eyes, the eyes that once belonged to her -- big, brown, soulful eyes that would sparkle with laugher at the slightest thought of happiness. Only the happiness is gone now and she doesn’t know where she left it or how to get it back. She only knows that it is gone and, in its absence, the sparkle has gone as well.
The eyes are not the same. They no longer reflect the soul of the person because that person no longer exists. The eyes now are deep and cold and empty -- pools of color that have been filled with something reaching far beyond the happiness that once was there. Like the yellow brick road it stretches endlessly, maddeningly, winding through valleys and woodlands, obscuring her vision until she has somehow lost sight of the Emerald City.
She lightly touches the tiny gold bracelet that she wears. It was a present from her mother and father, and she refuses to remove it from her wrist. It is engraved with her name on the side that is visible to others, but as in everything there are two sides, and only she knows the other is there. It is a single word engraved on the side of the bracelet that touches her skin and touches her heart: “Hope.” One small word that says so much about her life and what is now missing from it. She vaguely remembers hope -- what it felt like to hope for a college basketball scholarship or maybe a chance to dance professionally. Only now, she’s not sure she remembers hope as it was then -- a driving force, a fundamental part of her life. Now, hope is something that haunts her.
The dreams come nightly. Dreams of turning cartwheels in the yard or hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall. But there is one, the most vivid and recurring, and the most haunting of all...There is a lake and trees, a soft breeze and a perfect sky. It is a scene so beautiful it is almost beyond imagining. And in the midst of it all, she is walking. She has never felt more at peace.
But then she awakens and remembers. And remembering, she knows. She instinctively fingers the bracelet, the word. And the fear is almost overwhelming -- the fear of not knowing how to hope.
She thinks of her father’s God and how she now feels that God abandoned her. All at once, a single tear makes a trail down her thin, drawn face. Then another and another, and she is crying. “Oh Daddy, they say I’ll never walk again! They’re the best and they say I’ll never walk. Daddy, what will I do?”
He looks at her now and he stops the car. This is the man who has been with her down every road, every trail and every path -- so very like the scarecrow. And he speaks. “I know that they can put you back together. They can put steel rods in your back and sew you up. But look around you. Not one of your doctors can make a blade of grass.”
Suddenly she knows. He has taught her the most valuable lesson in her life and in all her journey: that she is never alone. There is an Oz; there is a wizard; there is a God. And there...is...hope. She releases her grip on the seat, looks out the window and smiles. And in that instant she loves her father more than she has ever loved him before
6.For the Best
It was two days after the tragic school shooting in Colorado, and I was feeling bad about what had happened to the students there. My school began having a lot of bomb threats and it seemed that police cars were there often. I was standing with my friend, Amberly, and her boyfriend when he casually said, 'I'm gonna blow up the school and kill everyone.' I asked, "Why would you want to do that?' and he said, 'I just do,' and walked away.
I was scared because no one had ever said anything like that to me before. I found out when talking to other friends that he also bragged about this to other people. My friends told me that I should tell an adult what he had said, but I was too scared and I made them promise not to tell anyone either.
One day, Amberly and I were talking about what he had said when the teacher overheard our conversation. She took me out into the hallway and made me tell her who had said it and what they had said. At first, I refused to say a word. She told me it really was for the best, so I told her. I felt awful for doing it. I was angry with her for making me tell who said it. I wasn't sure he really meant it and didn't want him to get into trouble.
He got suspended for two days and had two days of in- school detention after that. I sometimes wonder if I had not told, would he have done what he said he was going to do? The guys in Colorado seemed pretty normal to a lot of people. The bottom line is, you should never joke around about something as serious as killing people. If you do, responsible people have no choice but to have you checked out to ensure everyone else's safety.
After he was suspended, the whole sixth grade had an assembly. The principal and counselors told the students that there was a kid who was making threats and that he was suspended. I decided later to tell him that it was me who told on him so he wouldn't speculate about who did it. I was surprised to find that he was not angry with me for doing what I did. He was able to get help for his feel-ings and behavior.
Many people are in the same situation that I was in. If your friend is saying threatening stuff like my friend was, then they obviously need help-soon. It seems like when one school shooting happens, then another one occurs not too long after that. If there were any way that you could prevent one school shooting it could perhaps save your own life and many others as well. If I had to do it over again, I would-because it really was for the best
7.All Those Years
My friend Debbie’s two daughters were in high school when she experienced severe flu-like symptoms. Debbie visited her family doctor, who told her the flu bug had passed her by. Instead, she had been touched by the “love bug” and was now pregnant.
The birth of Tommy, a healthy, beautiful son, was an event for celebration, and as time went by, it seemed as though every day brought another reason to celebrate the gift of Tommy’s life. He was sweet, thoughtful, fun-loving and a joy to be around.
One day when Tommy was about five years old, he and Debbie were driving to the neighborhood mall. As is the way with children, out of nowhere, Tommy asked, “Mom, how old were you when I was born?”
“Thirty-six, Tommy. Why?” Debbie asked, wondering what his little mind was contemplating.
“What a shame!” Tommy responded.
“What do you mean?” Debbie inquired, more than a little puzzled. Looking at her with love-filled eyes, Tommy said, “Just think of all those years we didn’t know each other.
8.Old People
At age ninety-two, Grandma Fritz still lived in her old two-story farmhouse, made homemade noodles, and did her laundry in her wringer-washer in the basement. She maintained her vegetable garden, big enough to feed all of Benton County, with just a hoe and spade. Her seventy-year-old children lovingly protested when she insisted on mowing her huge lawn with her ancient push mower.
“I only work outside in the cool, early mornings and in the evenings,” Grandma explained, “and I always wear my sunbonnet.”
Still, her children were understandably relieved when they heard she was attending the noon lunches at the local senior citizens' center.
Yes, Grandma admitted, as her daughter nodded approvingly. “I cook for them. Those old people appreciate it so much!”
9.Albert
Working in a hospital with recent stroke patients was an all-or-nothing proposition. They were usually go grateful to be alive or just wanted to die. A quick glance told all.
Albert taught me much about strokes.
One afternoon while making rounds I'd met him, curled in a fetal position. A pale, dried-up old man with a look of death, head half-buried under a blanket. He didn't budge when I introduced myself, and he said nothing when I referred to dinner “soon.”
At the nurse's station, an attendant provided some history. He had no one. He'd lived too long. Wife of thirty years dead, five sons gone.
Well, maybe I could help. A chunky but pretty divorced nurse avoiding the male population outside of work, I could satisfy a need. I flirted.
The next day I wore a dress, not my usual nursing uniform but white. No lights on. Curtains drawn.
Albert hollered at the staff to get out. I pulled a chair close to his bed, crossing my shapely legs, head tilted. I gave him a perfect smile.
“Leave me. I want to die.”
“What a crime, all us single women out there.”
He looked annoyed. I rambled on about how I liked working “rehab” unit because I got to watch people reach their maximum potential. It was a place of possibilities. He said nothing.
Two days later during shift report, I learned that Albert had asked when I'd be “on.” The charge nurse referred to him as my “boyfriend” and word got around. I never argued. Outside his room, I'd tell others not to bother “my Albert.”
Soon he agreed to “dangle,” sit on the side of the bed to build up sitting tolerance, energy and balance. He agreed to “work” with physical therapy if I'd return “to talk.”
Two months later, Albert was on a walker. By the third month, he'd progressed to a cane. Fridays we celebrated discharges with a barbecue. Albert and I danced to Edith Piaf. He wasn't graceful, but he was leading. Tear-streaked cheeks touched as we bade our good-byes.
Periodically roses, mums and sweet peas would turn up. He was gardening again.
Then one afternoon, a lovely lavender-clad woman came on the unit demanding “that hussy.”
My supervisor called; I was in the middle of giving a bed bath.
“So you're the one! The woman who reminded my Albert that he's a man!” Her head tilted in full smile as she handed me a wedding invitation.
10.For the Record
Less than a year after my wife’s funeral I was confronted with the most terrible realities of being a widower with five children.
Notes from school.
Field-trip permission slips, PTA election ballots, Troll Book order forms, sports sign-ups, medical forms and innumerable academic progress reports -- an onslaught of paperwork courtesy of the educational bureaucracy.
This “literature” has to be read and signed, or placed at the bottom of the birdcage. Regardless of its destination it must be dealt with on a daily basis.
One day, eight-year-old Rachel was helping me complete five (count ’em, five) emergency treatment forms for school. She would fill in the generic information (name, address, phone number), and I would add the rest (insurance numbers, doctor’s name, date, signature). After signing the forms, I checked them for accuracy. It was then that I noticed on each card, in the slot beside Mother’s Business Phone, Rachel had written “1-800-HEAVEN."
A little boy walked down the aisle at a wedding. As he made his way to the front, he would take two steps, then stop, and turn to the crowd, alternating between the bride’s side and the groom’s side. While facing the crowd, he would put his hands up like claws and roar. And so it went -- step, step, ROAR, step, step, ROAR -- all the way down the aisle.
As you can imagine, the crowd was near tears from laughing so hard by the time he reached the pulpit. The little boy, however, was getting more and more distressed from all the laughing, and he was near tears by the time he reached the pulpit.
When asked what he was doing, the child sniffed back his tears and said, “I was being the ring bear.”
2.Step, Step, Roar
A little boy walked down the aisle at a wedding. As he made his way to the front, he would take two steps, then stop, and turn to the crowd, alternating between the bride’s side and the groom’s side. While facing the crowd, he would put his hands up like claws and roar. And so it went -- step, step, ROAR, step, step, ROAR -- all the way down the aisle.
As you can imagine, the crowd was near tears from laughing so hard by the time he reached the pulpit. The little boy, however, was getting more and more distressed from all the laughing, and he was near tears by the time he reached the pulpit.
When asked what he was doing, the child sniffed back his tears and said, “I was being the ring bear.”
3.The Cat Lady
I have lived in my neighborhood for twenty years. It seems to me that I’ve spent at least ten of those years looking for a lost pet, either mine or one I’d seen listed in the newspaper’s lost-pet column.
Recently, I was at it again, going door-to-door looking for one of my own lost kitties, a little black cat named Nicholas who’d slipped out the door before I could stop him. I made my rounds, visiting with all the neighbors, describing Nicholas. Familiar with this routine, everyone promised to keep an eye out and call me if they spotted him.
Two blocks from my house, I noticed a gentleman raking leaves in the yard of a home that had recently been sold. I introduced myself and presented my new neighbor with the plight of the missing Nicholas, asking if he had seen him.
“No,” he replied, “I’ve not seen a little black kitty around here.” He thought for a moment, looked at me and said, “But I know who you should ask. Several of my neighbors have told me that there’s a woman in the neighborhood who’s crazy about cats. They say she knows every cat around here, probably has dozens herself. They call her ‘The Cat Lady.’ Be sure to check with her.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said eagerly. “Do you know where she lives?”
He pointed a finger down the street, “It’s that one.”
I followed his finger and started to laugh.
He was pointing at my house!
4.She Told Me It Was Okay to Cry
I saw her last night for the first time in years. She was miserable. She had bleached her hair, trying to hide its true color, just as her rough front hid her deep unhappiness. She needed to talk, so we went for a walk. While I thought about my future, the college applications that had recently arrived, she thought about her past, the home she had recently left. Then she spoke. She told me about her love -- and I saw a dependent relationship with a dominating man. She told me about the drugs -- and I saw that they were her escape. She told me about her goals -- and I saw unrealistic material dreams. She told me she needed a friend -- and I saw hope, because at least I could give her that.
We had met in the second grade. She was missing a tooth, I was missing my friends. I had just moved across the continent to find cold metal swings and cold smirking faces outside the foreboding doors of P.S. 174, my new school. I asked her if I could see her Archie comic book, even though I didn’t really like comics; she said yes, even though she didn’t really like to share. Maybe we were both looking for a smile. And we found it. We found someone to giggle with late at night, someone to slurp hot chocolate with on the cold winter days when school was canceled and we would sit together by the bay window, watching the snow endlessly falling.
In the summer, at the pool, I got stung by a bee. She held my hand and told me that she was there and that it was okay to cry -- so I did. In the fall, we raked the leaves into piles and took turns jumping, never afraid because we knew that the multicolored bed would break our fall.
Only now, she had fallen and there was no one to catch her. We hadn’t spoken in months, we hadn’t seen each other in years. I had moved to California, she had moved out of the house. Our experiences were miles apart, making our hearts much father away from each other than the continent she had just traversed. Through her words I was alienated, but through her eyes I felt her yearning. She needed support in her search for strength and a new start. She needed my friendship now more than ever. So I took her hand and told her that I was there and that it was okay to cry -- so she did.
5.There Is an Oz
They arrive exactly at 8:00 a.m. to take her home, but she has been ready since before seven. She has taken a shower -- not an easy task lying down on a shower stretcher. She isn’t allowed to sit up yet without her body brace, but regardless, here she is, clean and freshly scrubbed and ever so anxious to go home. It has been two-and-a-half months since she has seen her home -- two-and-a-half months since the car accident. It doesn’t matter that she is going home in a wheelchair or that her legs don’t work. All she knows is that she is going home, and home will make everything okay. Even Dorothy says so: “Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!” It’s her favorite movie.
As they put her in the car, she thinks now of how much her father reminds her of the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Like the scarecrow, he is built in pieces of many different things -- strength, courage and love. Especially love.
He isn’t an elegant man. Her father is tall and lanky and has dirt under his fingernails from working outside. He is strictly blue collar -- a laborer. He never went to college, didn’t even go to high school. By the world’s standards he isn’t “educated.” An awful lot like the scarecrow -- but she knows differently. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does, she knows it is worth remembering. Even worth writing down. But she never has to write down anything that her father says because she knows she’ll never forget.
It is hard for her to sit comfortably while wearing the body brace and so she sits, still and unnatural, staring out the window. Her face is tense and tired and older somehow, much older than her seventeen years. She doesn’t even remember the world of a seventeen-year-old girl -- it’s as if that world never was. And she thinks she knows what Dorothy must have meant when she said, “Oh, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” It is more than an issue of geography, she is quite certain.
They pull out onto the road to begin their journey and approach the stop sign at the corner. The stop sign is just a formality; no one ever stops here. Today, however, is different. As he goes to coast through the intersection, she is instantly alert, the face alive and the eyes flashing. She grips the sides of the seat. “Stop! That’s a stop sign! You could get us killed! Don’t you know that?” And then, more quietly and with even more intensity, “You don’t know what it’s like -- you have never been there.” He looks at her and says nothing. The scarecrow and Dorothy journey onward.
As they continue to drive, her mind is constantly at work. She still hasn’t loosened her grip on the seat. She thinks of the eyes, the eyes that once belonged to her -- big, brown, soulful eyes that would sparkle with laugher at the slightest thought of happiness. Only the happiness is gone now and she doesn’t know where she left it or how to get it back. She only knows that it is gone and, in its absence, the sparkle has gone as well.
The eyes are not the same. They no longer reflect the soul of the person because that person no longer exists. The eyes now are deep and cold and empty -- pools of color that have been filled with something reaching far beyond the happiness that once was there. Like the yellow brick road it stretches endlessly, maddeningly, winding through valleys and woodlands, obscuring her vision until she has somehow lost sight of the Emerald City.
She lightly touches the tiny gold bracelet that she wears. It was a present from her mother and father, and she refuses to remove it from her wrist. It is engraved with her name on the side that is visible to others, but as in everything there are two sides, and only she knows the other is there. It is a single word engraved on the side of the bracelet that touches her skin and touches her heart: “Hope.” One small word that says so much about her life and what is now missing from it. She vaguely remembers hope -- what it felt like to hope for a college basketball scholarship or maybe a chance to dance professionally. Only now, she’s not sure she remembers hope as it was then -- a driving force, a fundamental part of her life. Now, hope is something that haunts her.
The dreams come nightly. Dreams of turning cartwheels in the yard or hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall. But there is one, the most vivid and recurring, and the most haunting of all...There is a lake and trees, a soft breeze and a perfect sky. It is a scene so beautiful it is almost beyond imagining. And in the midst of it all, she is walking. She has never felt more at peace.
But then she awakens and remembers. And remembering, she knows. She instinctively fingers the bracelet, the word. And the fear is almost overwhelming -- the fear of not knowing how to hope.
She thinks of her father’s God and how she now feels that God abandoned her. All at once, a single tear makes a trail down her thin, drawn face. Then another and another, and she is crying. “Oh Daddy, they say I’ll never walk again! They’re the best and they say I’ll never walk. Daddy, what will I do?”
He looks at her now and he stops the car. This is the man who has been with her down every road, every trail and every path -- so very like the scarecrow. And he speaks. “I know that they can put you back together. They can put steel rods in your back and sew you up. But look around you. Not one of your doctors can make a blade of grass.”
Suddenly she knows. He has taught her the most valuable lesson in her life and in all her journey: that she is never alone. There is an Oz; there is a wizard; there is a God. And there...is...hope. She releases her grip on the seat, looks out the window and smiles. And in that instant she loves her father more than she has ever loved him before
6.For the Best
It was two days after the tragic school shooting in Colorado, and I was feeling bad about what had happened to the students there. My school began having a lot of bomb threats and it seemed that police cars were there often. I was standing with my friend, Amberly, and her boyfriend when he casually said, 'I'm gonna blow up the school and kill everyone.' I asked, "Why would you want to do that?' and he said, 'I just do,' and walked away.
I was scared because no one had ever said anything like that to me before. I found out when talking to other friends that he also bragged about this to other people. My friends told me that I should tell an adult what he had said, but I was too scared and I made them promise not to tell anyone either.
One day, Amberly and I were talking about what he had said when the teacher overheard our conversation. She took me out into the hallway and made me tell her who had said it and what they had said. At first, I refused to say a word. She told me it really was for the best, so I told her. I felt awful for doing it. I was angry with her for making me tell who said it. I wasn't sure he really meant it and didn't want him to get into trouble.
He got suspended for two days and had two days of in- school detention after that. I sometimes wonder if I had not told, would he have done what he said he was going to do? The guys in Colorado seemed pretty normal to a lot of people. The bottom line is, you should never joke around about something as serious as killing people. If you do, responsible people have no choice but to have you checked out to ensure everyone else's safety.
After he was suspended, the whole sixth grade had an assembly. The principal and counselors told the students that there was a kid who was making threats and that he was suspended. I decided later to tell him that it was me who told on him so he wouldn't speculate about who did it. I was surprised to find that he was not angry with me for doing what I did. He was able to get help for his feel-ings and behavior.
Many people are in the same situation that I was in. If your friend is saying threatening stuff like my friend was, then they obviously need help-soon. It seems like when one school shooting happens, then another one occurs not too long after that. If there were any way that you could prevent one school shooting it could perhaps save your own life and many others as well. If I had to do it over again, I would-because it really was for the best
7.All Those Years
My friend Debbie’s two daughters were in high school when she experienced severe flu-like symptoms. Debbie visited her family doctor, who told her the flu bug had passed her by. Instead, she had been touched by the “love bug” and was now pregnant.
The birth of Tommy, a healthy, beautiful son, was an event for celebration, and as time went by, it seemed as though every day brought another reason to celebrate the gift of Tommy’s life. He was sweet, thoughtful, fun-loving and a joy to be around.
One day when Tommy was about five years old, he and Debbie were driving to the neighborhood mall. As is the way with children, out of nowhere, Tommy asked, “Mom, how old were you when I was born?”
“Thirty-six, Tommy. Why?” Debbie asked, wondering what his little mind was contemplating.
“What a shame!” Tommy responded.
“What do you mean?” Debbie inquired, more than a little puzzled. Looking at her with love-filled eyes, Tommy said, “Just think of all those years we didn’t know each other.
8.Old People
At age ninety-two, Grandma Fritz still lived in her old two-story farmhouse, made homemade noodles, and did her laundry in her wringer-washer in the basement. She maintained her vegetable garden, big enough to feed all of Benton County, with just a hoe and spade. Her seventy-year-old children lovingly protested when she insisted on mowing her huge lawn with her ancient push mower.
“I only work outside in the cool, early mornings and in the evenings,” Grandma explained, “and I always wear my sunbonnet.”
Still, her children were understandably relieved when they heard she was attending the noon lunches at the local senior citizens' center.
Yes, Grandma admitted, as her daughter nodded approvingly. “I cook for them. Those old people appreciate it so much!”
9.Albert
Working in a hospital with recent stroke patients was an all-or-nothing proposition. They were usually go grateful to be alive or just wanted to die. A quick glance told all.
Albert taught me much about strokes.
One afternoon while making rounds I'd met him, curled in a fetal position. A pale, dried-up old man with a look of death, head half-buried under a blanket. He didn't budge when I introduced myself, and he said nothing when I referred to dinner “soon.”
At the nurse's station, an attendant provided some history. He had no one. He'd lived too long. Wife of thirty years dead, five sons gone.
Well, maybe I could help. A chunky but pretty divorced nurse avoiding the male population outside of work, I could satisfy a need. I flirted.
The next day I wore a dress, not my usual nursing uniform but white. No lights on. Curtains drawn.
Albert hollered at the staff to get out. I pulled a chair close to his bed, crossing my shapely legs, head tilted. I gave him a perfect smile.
“Leave me. I want to die.”
“What a crime, all us single women out there.”
He looked annoyed. I rambled on about how I liked working “rehab” unit because I got to watch people reach their maximum potential. It was a place of possibilities. He said nothing.
Two days later during shift report, I learned that Albert had asked when I'd be “on.” The charge nurse referred to him as my “boyfriend” and word got around. I never argued. Outside his room, I'd tell others not to bother “my Albert.”
Soon he agreed to “dangle,” sit on the side of the bed to build up sitting tolerance, energy and balance. He agreed to “work” with physical therapy if I'd return “to talk.”
Two months later, Albert was on a walker. By the third month, he'd progressed to a cane. Fridays we celebrated discharges with a barbecue. Albert and I danced to Edith Piaf. He wasn't graceful, but he was leading. Tear-streaked cheeks touched as we bade our good-byes.
Periodically roses, mums and sweet peas would turn up. He was gardening again.
Then one afternoon, a lovely lavender-clad woman came on the unit demanding “that hussy.”
My supervisor called; I was in the middle of giving a bed bath.
“So you're the one! The woman who reminded my Albert that he's a man!” Her head tilted in full smile as she handed me a wedding invitation.
10.For the Record
Less than a year after my wife’s funeral I was confronted with the most terrible realities of being a widower with five children.
Notes from school.
Field-trip permission slips, PTA election ballots, Troll Book order forms, sports sign-ups, medical forms and innumerable academic progress reports -- an onslaught of paperwork courtesy of the educational bureaucracy.
This “literature” has to be read and signed, or placed at the bottom of the birdcage. Regardless of its destination it must be dealt with on a daily basis.
One day, eight-year-old Rachel was helping me complete five (count ’em, five) emergency treatment forms for school. She would fill in the generic information (name, address, phone number), and I would add the rest (insurance numbers, doctor’s name, date, signature). After signing the forms, I checked them for accuracy. It was then that I noticed on each card, in the slot beside Mother’s Business Phone, Rachel had written “1-800-HEAVEN."
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