“No,” was my simple but strong reply. Regardless of their comments like “good girl” and “too-good,” I stuck with my no smoking policy. Since then, I have been offered cigarettes many times, and I have always replied with a simple “no.” I wouldn’t want my grandchildren feeling the way I did if they lost me to smoking.
I was too young to figure out what a great role model I had around me when he was alive. But I realize it now. Papa is in every thought I have today. I still have all our special memories in my heart. He always made me believe in myself. Anything I do, he has influenced in some way. No one has ever or will ever have the patience he had with me.
His death taught me many lessons, but the one so harshly instilled in me is that no one, even someone as great as him, is invincible.
Leslie Miller, fourteen
[EDITORS’ NOTE: To learn more about the effects of smoking, contact the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids at www.tobacco freekids.org or call 1-800-284-KIDS to get involved in its campaign against the tobacco industry.]
ZIGGY®
ZIGGY. ©1995 ZIGGY AND FRIENDS, INC. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.
6
ON ATTITUDE
AND
PERSPECTIVE
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: “I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”
Groucho Marx
Big at Heart
Every man stamps his value on himself. . . . Man is made great or small by his own will.
J. C. F. von Schiller
My best friend’s exceptionally small. We’re in the fifth grade, but Larry’s as short as a first-grader. Although his body’s small, Larry’s big at heart. He has a sharp mind, too. All the kids who know Larry like him a lot.
Sometimes he gets his share of teasing, but Larry knows how to handle it. When some smart-mouth calls him Dopey, Sleepy or Bashful, Larry just laughs and starts humming, “Hi, Ho!”
Larry loves sports, but he can’t play some, like football. One tackle and he would be wiped out. But one sport seems to be made for Larry—baseball. He’s our star player. The legs that are too short for track and hurdles can pump up and down, carrying him around those bases faster than you can see. He can slide to safety under a baseman before he’s noticed. And when he’s in the field, he catches and throws that ball like the biggest of us.
I remember when he first came to try out for our Little League team. The coach took one look and shook his head.
“No, I’m sorry, but we need big, strong players. Tell you what—we could use a batboy!”
Larry just grinned and said, “Give me a chance to try out. If you still think I’m a weak player, I’ll be the best batboy you ever had!”
The coach looked at him with respect, handed him a bat, and said, “Okay, it’s a deal.”
Well, obviously no pitcher could aim the ball inside Larry’s ten-inch strike zone! He would be a sure walk to first base every time, and the coach knew how to take advantage of that. And when he saw how fast Larry’s legs could travel and how well he handled the ball, he bent over, patted Larry on the back, and said, “I’m proud to have you on the team.”
We had a winning season, and yesterday was our final game. We were tied with the Comets for the championship. Their pitcher, Matt Crenshaw, was a mean kid who never liked Larry—probably because he could never strike him out.
Somehow we held the Comets through the top of the ninth inning, and we were tied when it was our turn at bat. As Matt passed our bench on the way to the pitcher’s mound, he snarled at Larry, “Why don’t you go back to Snow White where you belong?”
I heard him and jumped up, ready to give Matt a punch, when Larry stepped between us. “Cut it out!” he yelled, pushing me away from Matt. “I can fight for myself.”
Matt looked as if he was going to clobber Larry, but my friend held out his hand and said, “Let’s play baseball, okay? I know you want your team to win and it must be tough to pitch to a shrimp like me.”
“Chicken, you mean. You won’t even swing at the ball!” Then he stamped off to the mound as Larry slowly dropped his outstretched hand.
We had two outs when it was Larry’s turn at bat. The bases weren’t loaded, but the coach told Larry to wait for a walk, as usual. Larry held his ground for three balls. One more and he would walk to first.
Then, for some reason—maybe because Matt had called him “chicken”—Larry reached out for the next pitch. It wasn’t anywhere near his strike zone, but he swung the bat up and around. He connected. We heard a loud crack and saw the ball sail over all the outfielders. They had to chase after it, and Larry’s legs started churning. Like locomotive wheels, they went faster and faster, rounding second and third and heading for home. The Comets finally retrieved the ball and passed it to the catcher. Larry slid safely under him as he caught it.
We had our winning run, the game was over, and we were the champs. After we were presented with our winner’s trophy, we gave it to Larry and took turns putting him on our shoulders and marching around the field.
I was carrying him when we passed Matt. “Put me down for a minute,” Larry said. He walked over to Matt with his hand extended again for the handshake Matt had refused earlier.
“It was a good game,” Larry said, “and you came close to winning it. . . .”
Matt looked at Larry for what seemed like a long time, but finally Matt took Larry’s hand and shook it.
“You may be a shrimp,” he said, “but you’re no chicken. You deserved to win.”
Then Larry and I ran back to the rest of our team. We were all going to the pizza place for a victory celebration. I sure was proud to have Larry as a friend. Like I said, he’s big in the ways that really count.
Mark Schulle
As told by Bunny Schulle
The Best Christmas I Never Had
To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything.
Bernadette Devlin
My sister, Yvonne, was fourteen the year our home and everything in it was destroyed. I was seventeen. Our home was heated by a wood-burning stove, and every fall, my family and I would mark dead trees, cut them down, haul the wood and stack it in the basement. The week before Christmas, the basement was half full of dry wood.
Yvonne and I were home from school, and she did as either of us had done a thousand times before: checked the furnace, tossed a few more logs on the fire and slammed the door shut.
At the time, I was upstairs sulking. I had a sink full of dishes to wash, homework to tackle and my grandfather, after a lonely day at home, wouldn’t leave me alone. Stomping around the kitchen, listening to him chatter, I thought about how I couldn’t wait to get out of this house, this town. Lightning could strike this very spot and I wouldn’t care. Or so I thought.
The house seemed a little smoky, but that wasn’t unusual. It often became that way after the furnace had a few new logs to chew up. I simply waved the smoke away and kept doing dishes and daydreaming of getting away from my family. My sister’s cats were no help; they were as starved for affection as Grandpa, and kept twining around my ankles.
My sister wandered in and said, “Don’t you think it’s a little too smoky in here?”
I shrugged sullenly and kept washing dishes. But after another minute, we knew something was wrong. The smoke was much too thick. My sister and I looked at each other, then at our grandfather. He was the adult, but he lived with us because he couldn’t take care of himself. If there were decisions to be made, my sister and I—high school students—would make them. The thought was daunting, to say the least.
Without a word to each other, we went outside and opened the garage door (foolish in retrospect) and stared in disbelief as smoke and flames boiled out.
We had no time for tears or hysterics. Th
at would come later. Instead, we both turned and ran up the hill. My sister shot through the kitchen door and raced for Grandpa’s coat while I searched frantically for my keys. “There’s a fire, Grandpa,” I said abruptly. Where in the world had I put my purse? “We have to get out.”
“Oh. Okay,” he agreed. Amiable as a child, Grandpa stood still while my sister jerked him into his coat. She made sure he was warm and tightly bundled, forced warm slippers on his feet and hustled him out the door. I was so busy wondering where my keys were and trying the phone, which was dead, I never noticed that in her great care to make sure our grandfather was protected from the elements, she had neglected her own coat and boots.
I glanced out the window, blinking from the smoke. December in Minnesota was no joke . . . and no place for two teenagers and an old man to await help. If I could find my keys, I could get back down to the garage and probably, if the flames hadn’t spread that far, back the van out of the garage. We could wait for help in relative comfort, and at least my mom’s van could be saved.
Memory flashed; I had tossed my purse in my room when I’d come home. My room was at the end of a long hallway, far from the kitchen. Daughter and granddaughter of professional firefighters, I should have known better. But things were happening so quickly—my little sister and my grandfather were standing in the snow, shivering—I had to get the van. So I started for my room, the worst decision I’ve ever made.
The smoke was gag-inducing, a thick gray-black. It smelled like a thousand campfires and I tried not to think about what was being destroyed: my family’s pictures, their clothes, furniture. I’d gone three steps and couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe. How was I going to make it all the way to my room?
I wasn’t, of course. I instantly knew two things: if I went down that hallway, I would die. Number two, what was I still doing in this inferno? Ten-year-olds were taught better. My sister was probably terrified, and in another moment, she’d come after me. How stupid could I be?
I stumbled back to the kitchen, took one last glance around my home, then went out into the snow.
Yvonne was sobbing, watching our house burn to the foundation. Grandpa was patting her absently. “That’s what insurance is for,” he said. A veteran of the New York City Fire Department, I couldn’t imagine how many house fires he had fought. For the first time, I could see him as a real person and not my aged, feeble grandfather who took up entirely too much of my time with his endless pleas for me to sit down and talk to him.
“I’m going to the neighbors’ to call for help,” Yvonne said abruptly. She was wearing a sweater, jeans and slippers. I was in sweat pants, a T-shirt and socks. The closest neighbor was down the length of our driveway and across the highway, about a mile.
“Okay,” I said. “Be careful crossing the . . .” But she was gone, already running through the snow and down the driveway.
Then I remembered Yvonne’s three cats, which were, I guessed, trapped in the house. When she remembered them, I thought, she would go right out of her mind.
It seemed she was only gone for a moment before I saw her puffing up the driveway. “I called,” she gasped, “they’re on their way.”
“You should have stayed with the neighbors and gotten warm,” I said, mad at myself because I hadn’t told her to stay put.
She gave me a look. “I couldn’t leave you out here in the cold.”
“Actually, I’m not that . . . ,” I began, when suddenly Yvonne clapped her hands to her face and screamed.
“Oh my God, the cats!” she shrieked, then burst into hoarse sobs.
“It’s okay, Yvonne, it’s okay, I saw them get out,” I said frantically, reaching for her. I could tell she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t say anything more, just wept steadily and ignored my fervent assurances—my lies.
As it swiftly grew dark, our burning house lit up the sky. It was as beautiful as it was awful. And the smell . . . to this day, whenever someone lights a fire in a fireplace, I have to leave the room briefly. A lot of people find fireplaces soothing, but to me the smell of burning wood brings back the sense of desolation and the sound of my sister’s sobs.
We could hear sirens in the distance and moved out of the way as two fire trucks and the sheriff pulled in. The sheriff screeched to a halt and beckoned to us. In another minute he was talking to my grandfather while Yvonne and I sat in the back of the police car, getting warm.
After a long moment, Yvonne sighed. “I just finished my Christmas shopping yesterday.”
I snorted . . . and the snort became a giggle, and the giggle bloomed into a laugh. That got my sister going, and we laughed until we cried and then laughed some more.
“I got you the CD you wanted,” I told her.
“Really?” she said. “I bought you a new Walkman.”
We listed all the things we had bought for friends and family that were now burning to cinders. Instead of being depressing, it was probably the highlight of the evening. The sheriff interrupted our spiritual gift-giving to open the door and say, “Your parents are here.”
We scrambled out and raced down the driveway. If I live to be one thousand, I’ll never forget my mother’s face at that moment: bloodless and terrified. She saw us and opened her arms. We hurled ourselves at her, though we were both considerably taller than she was and nearly toppled her back into the snow. Dad looked us over, satisfied too that we weren’t hurt, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “What are you crying about?” he asked, pretending annoyance. “We’ve got insurance. And now we’ll get a new house for Christmas.”
“Dad . . . for Christmas . . . I got you those fishing lures you wanted but . . .”
He grinned. “That reminds me. I picked up your presents on the way home.” He stepped to the truck and pulled out two garment bags. Inside were the gorgeous jackets Yvonne and I had been longing for since we’d fallen in love with them at the mall.
We shrugged into them, ankle-deep in snow, while the house crackled and burned in front of us. It was a strange way to receive a Christmas present, but neither of us were complaining.
“We’ll have to come back here tomorrow,” Dad said. “It’s going to be depressing and stinky and muddy and frozen and disgusting and sad. Most of our stuff will be destroyed. But they’re only things. They can’t love you back. The important thing is that we’re all okay. The house could burn down a thousand times and I wouldn’t care, as long as you guys were all right.”
He looked at us again and walked away, head down, hands in his pockets. Mom told us later he had driven ninety miles an hour once he’d seen the smoke, that they both gripped the other’s hand while he raced to the house. Not knowing if we were out safe was the worst moment of her life.
Later we found out the pipe leading from the furnace to the wall had collapsed, spilling flaming coals all over our basement. If it had happened at 2:00 A.M., we all would have died of smoke inhalation. In less than half an hour, our house transformed from a safe haven to a death trap. Asleep, we would have had no chance.
We lived in a motel for more than a month, and we spent Christmas Day in my grandmother’s crowded apartment eating take-out because she was too tired to cook. For Christmas, Yvonne and I got our jackets and nothing else. My parents got nothing except the headache of dealing with insurance companies. All the wonderful things my family had bought for me had been destroyed in less time than it takes to do a sink full of dishes. But through it all I had gained long-overdue appreciation for my family. We were together. That was really all that mattered.
I’ll always remember it as the best Christmas I never had.
MaryJanice Davidson
The Hidden Treasure
Old Man Donovan was a mean man who hated children. He threw rocks at them and even shot at them with a shotgun. At least that’s what we had heard.
His small farm bordered our neighborhood where my younger sister, Leigh Ann, and I lived when we were growing up. His farm was long, narrow and
quaint. It held two treasures. One was his beautiful fruit.
There were many varieties of fruit: pears, apples and lots more I just can’t think of. The fruit naturally drew the children to his land. It made them into thieves. But my sister and I didn’t dare to take his fruit because of the horrible rumors we had heard about Old Man Donovan.
One summer day, we were playing in a nearby field. It was time to head back home. My sister and I were feeling very daring that day. There was a short cut to our house that went through the Donovan farm. We thought he wouldn’t be able to see us run across his property around the luscious fruit trees. We were almost through the farm when we heard, “Hey, girls!” in a gruff, low voice. We stopped dead in our tracks! There we were, face to face, with Old Man Donovan. Our knees were shaking. We had visions of rocks pounding our bodies and bullets piercing our hearts.
“Come here,” he said, reaching up to one of his apple trees. Still shaking, we went over to him. He held out several ripe, juicy, red apples. “Take these home,” he commanded. We took the apples with surprised hearts and ran all the way home. Of course, Leigh Ann and I ate the apples.
As time went on, we often went through Old Man Donovan’s farm, and he kept on giving us more luscious fruit. One day, we stopped by to see him when he was on his front porch. We talked to him for hours. While he was talking, we realized that we had found the other hidden treasure: the sweet, kind heart hidden behind his gruff voice. Soon, he was one of our favorite people to talk to. Unfortunately, his family never seemed to enjoy our company. They never smiled or welcomed us in.
Every summer, we would visit Mr. Donovan and talk to him. He told us all kinds of stories we loved to hear. But one summer, we heard that he was sick. When we found out that he had come home from the hospital, we visited him right away. His voice box had been removed. When he placed his fingers on his throat, his voice came out as a whisper. We couldn’t understand him, but through his eyes we could tell what he meant.