My mom actually did have more feelings than I thought. Maybe my small problems of needing to have a certain CD, of buying a swimsuit, the need to impress some guy or an invisible zit weren’t as important as I thought.
I can’t say that, after reading the letter, all of those things still don’t cross my mind, but I have a new respect for my mom. I don’t ask her for things as much, and I don’t yell and cry as much when she says, “No.”
What did change was that I can tell her more about my own feelings, because now I feel that she will understand. I’m glad I found out early enough, before I grew up and left home. I have my mom to talk to, when I need to.
I don’t know what would have happened if I had never read that letter. I don’t think I want to know. I’m just glad that I did.
Lauren Thorbjornsen, fourteen
Hard Work Pays Off
The road to happiness lies in two simple principles:
find out what it is that interests you and that you can do well,
and when you find it, put your whole soul into it—
every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.
John D. Rockefeller III
As a young boy, I grew up with my eight siblings in a tin-roofed shack in Summerfield, Louisiana. I didn’t see my circumstance as an obstacle, even though we didn’t even have a real toilet in the house. I saw my life more as a card that had been dealt to me and I tried to make the most of it.
I was the youngest of five boys and also had four sisters who had to pull together and take care of each other. Dad wasn’t around, so I never knew him well. He committed suicide when I was three years old, leaving Mom with the job of raising and providing for nine kids. She worked at a ON ATTITUDE AND PERSPECTIVE sawmill running a forklift for fifty dollars a week and had another job at a poultry plant. She was a very hard worker, and in order to make ends meet, she hardly ever rested.
My mom believed in doing all she could do to take care of her responsibilities, so no matter what, she never asked for a handout. You can imagine; we kids didn’t get what we wanted, but we always got the things we needed. With my mom as my example, I learned that hard work is the best way to get what you want.
While growing up, I was surrounded with temptations to do negative things like drugs, alcohol and all that. I chose not to go there. Even as a little boy, I knew I was going to be successful. Some people take that to be cocky or conceited, but I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me that I couldn’t do whatever I set out to do.
Of course, I dreamed about what I wanted to be when I grew up. At first, I wanted be a state trooper, then I wanted to be in the Special Forces. After awhile, I decided that I wanted to drive eighteen-wheelers. There was even a period of time that I wanted to be in construction. I wanted to play football in high school; in fact, I still do. But regardless of what I chose, I wanted to make my brothers, sisters and mom proud of me—not only by being successful in what I chose to do, but also as a person who could be looked up to for the right reasons.
Surprising as it might seem, basketball wasn’t in my plans. One day, my mom cut a rim off an old water barrel and then held it up for me to throw an old rubber ball through. By junior high, I started playing basketball on a team. I loved to compete. There was a positive high I got by going out and playing against other people and working hard to win. For me, it paid off. I just let my success in basketball take its course but I always put the effort in, every day.
No matter what I’ve done, some people wait for my downfall, saying, “Karl Malone can’t do it.” Instead of letting people like that get to me, they are actually my motivation and I continue to prove them wrong every single day. I try to do the best job I can in a positive way on and off the court. I realize that no matter what I’m dealing with, there’s somebody else out there who has it a little bit worse off. I’ve been there. And I know that without continued hard work, I could be there again.
I am grateful for the life I’ve enjoyed as a basketball star. But when I see these shirts that say “Basketball is life,” I think Yeah, right! It is not life. It can be exciting. But the important thing about basketball is that it gives me a way to do good things for others as I move through this journey called life.
Success is really about choosing right from wrong, making a positive contribution to the world around you and valuing the things that are really important—like family and friends.
While everyone else was looking to popular athletes, actors and musicians as positive role models, my mom was my inspiration, and she continues to be all these years later. She taught me that hard work never killed anybody. My mom is my hero. She, my family and friends bring me more joy than anything else in life does.
At the end of my life, I don’t want to be remembered as the kind of person who just sat on his rear end and said, “I’ve made it.” I don’t ever want to have to say that I didn’t give it everything that I’ve got. Sure there are days that I don’t feel like working hard . . . but I do it anyway, ’cause that’s who I am.
Karl Malone
7
OVERCOMING
OBSTACLES
Lost in dark depression
Not knowing where to turn
I opened the windows to my soul
To see what I could learn
I swept up the depression
Scrubbed the sadness and the hurt
I put it all in trash bags
And set them by the curb
I found stashed in a corner
Tucked high upon a shelf
A treasure chest of knowledge
That I could love myself
And wherever my future takes me
I know that I will win
Because I opened the windows to my soul
And let the light shine in.
Hope Saxton
Annie Wiggle-Do
To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity.
Edward Weeks
“Look who’s here to see you, Brenda,” the nurse said.
She led a tired-looking woman to the girl’s bedside.
Brenda huddled on her side, facing the wall. When her mother touched her shoulder, she pulled her head closer to her chest, as if making her body smaller would help her disappear altogether.
The nurse patted the mother’s shoulder.
“Brenda’s still not talking to us,” she said in a low voice.
Brenda’s mother bit her lip to keep from crying. She remembered exactly how bubbly and happy Brenda had been before the car accident that led to the amputation of her leg. She’d been one of the most popular girls in her sixth-grade class.
When Brenda first awakened from her surgery, she had raged at her mother. Why had this happened? Now, she felt like a freak. No one would ever want to be her friend. She would never date, never have a boyfriend. Then, Brenda had just stopped talking.
“I wish I could bring her friends to visit her,” said Brenda’s mother. “It’s just too long a bus trip, though, about three hours each way.”
The nurse smiled. “Don’t worry. We have a plan.”
Shortly after Brenda’s mother left, two nurses wheeled in a stretcher.
“Moving day, Brenda!” one said cheerily. “We need this bed for someone who’s really sick. We’ve picked out the best roommate in the hospital for you.”
Before Brenda could protest, the nurses had rolled her onto the stretcher and whisked her down the hall. The room was awash with light, posters and music.
“Here’s your new roomie, Annie Wiggle-Do,” one nurse told a dark-haired teenager in the other bed. “She’s just beginning to get better, so please don’t kill her with your corny jokes.”
Fourteen-year-old Annie grinned. As soon as the nurses left, she hopped out of her bed and sat on the end of Brenda’s.
“I lost my leg from bone cancer,” she announced. “What happened to yours?”
Brenda was so astounded she couldn’t even form a word.
“You’re lucky,” Annie continued. “You’ve still got your knee. They had to take mine, hip and all, see?”
But Brenda’s eyes had already found the raw scar and empty hip socket. Her gaze seemed frozen, like a magnet held it there.
Annie scooted back to her bed. “I’d like to socialize, but my boyfriend’s due any time now, so I have to get ready.”
As Brenda watched transfixed, Annie reached up and took off her hair! Her head was completely bald.
Annie giggled. “Oh, I forgot to warn you, the stuff they gave me to kill the cancer also killed my hair. But check this out! My parents, my grandma, my boyfriend and some kids from school all brought me wigs!”
From her bedside stand, Annie removed a tangle of wigs. Brown wigs and blond wigs, short-haired and longhaired wigs, curly wigs and straight wigs.
“That’s when I thought up ‘Annie Wiggle-Do,’ Annie said. “Get it? ‘Any wig will do.’ Annie Wiggle-Do?”
Laughing at her own joke, Annie chose a curly blond wig and arranged it on her head. She just managed to dab on some pink lip-gloss and powder before a group of boisterous teens burst into the room. Annie introduced Brenda to them all. Her boyfriend, Donald, winked at Brenda and asked her to keep Annie out of trouble.
Before long, Brenda began chatting with Annie and her friends. They didn’t make her feel like a freak at all! One girl even shared with Brenda that her cousin wore an artificial leg, played basketball and rode a motorcycle. By the time the nurses shooed all the visitors from the room, Brenda felt more like the old Brenda.
The girls talked into the night. Annie shared her dream of becoming a comedy writer. Brenda told Annie about her secret desire to act in live theater.
“Ladies!”
A night nurse came in and shined her flashlight on Annie and Brenda. “It’s after midnight,” the nurse scolded. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“Nothing, your honor,” Annie said. “We don’t have a leg to stand on!”
They all laughed, but Brenda laughed hardest of all.
As the nurse’s footsteps faded down the hallway, Brenda snuggled under her blanket. “‘Night, Annie Wiggle-Do,” she whispered. “I can hardly wait ’til morning.”
Kathleen M. Muldoon
Two Percent Is Enough
From the day I was born, I was a sickly, weak child who never had as much energy as a child my age should. When I turned four, everything seemed to go wrong. I had asthma and for the most part I was in constant pain. Every day, I had a nagging side pain that seemed to never go away and I was in and out of doctors’ offices many times, but they could never figure out what was wrong. “Simply growing pains,” they told my parents.
One night, I had a fever, high blood pressure, nonstop vomiting and my feet were purple. My parents rushed me to the emergency room, where they were told that I needed my appendix taken out. I lay there that night, getting worse by the minute. Finally, purple feet became numb and my stomach was empty of everything. My parents lost control of their emotions. The next morning, my urine was brown. At that point, the doctors knew it was more than my appendix.
The next day, I was taken by ambulance to Children’s Hospital under the care of Dr. Kohen, a kidney specialist. I was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney disease called glumerulonephritis. After two weeks of treatment, I was still not responding. My kidneys were only functioning 2 percent of the time and if something wasn’t done, I would die.
My parents were faced with choices they never thought they would have to make: steroids, dialysis or a transplant. They were told that their only daughter was dying and without vast improvement would be put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant.
That night, my dad sat down by my bed and told me that I was going to have to fight harder than I had ever fought before. All of a sudden, I reached up and—mustering all the energy I had—I punched him in the nose! He knew then that I was not going to give up without a fight.
The next morning I was evaluated for a transplant. I was put on a steroid. Within a couple of days, I started showing steady signs of improvement, but my parents were told, “Krissy will never have as much energy as a normal kid, even if she pulls through.”
Within four days I was strong enough to return home. For the next couple of months, I was under constant supervision. As a four-year-old little girl, I was taking fourteen pills a day and having my blood taken every other day. Gradually, I was taken off of the medicine and my doctors’ visits grew further apart. But still, I was given no chance of a full recovery.
Well, ten years later, I can proudly say, “Look at me now!” I am fourteen years old, I play four sports, I am a member of the National Junior Honor Society at my school, vice president of Student Council, have a 3.5 grade point average, and I am a living miracle to my doctors, family and friends. I thank God every day for giving me my life. Even if you are only given a 2 percent chance of survival, that’s all you really need.
Krissy Creager, fourteen
The First Day of Middle School
The transition into middle school will be the hardest change kids experience during their school years. . . . Compared to this, the first day of high school is a piece of cake.
Allan Mucerino, Principal, Ensign Intermediate School
My stomach was tied in knots, and I could feel the sweat soaking through my T-shirt. My hands were clammy as I spun the face of my combination lock. I tried and tried to remember the numbers, and every time I thought I had it, the lock wouldn’t open. Around and around went the numbers, left, right, right, left . . . which way was it supposed to go? I couldn’t make it work. I gave up and started to run down the hallway. As I ran, the hall seemed to get longer and longer . . . the door I was trying to reach was farther away than when I had started. I began to sweat even worse, then I could feel the tears forming. I was late, late, late, late for my first class on my first day of middle school. As I ran, people were watching me and they were laughing . . . laughing . . . laughing . . . then the bell rang! In my dream, it was the school bell. But as I sat up in bed, I realized that it was my alarm clock jarring me awake.
I was having the dream again. I started having the dream around the end of sixth grade, and as the start of seventh grade drew closer, the more I had the dream. This time the dream was even more real, because today was the morning of the first day of seventh grade.
In my heart, I knew I would never make it. Everything was too different. School, friends—even my own body.
I was used to walking to school, and now I had to walk six blocks to the bus stop so that I could take the bus to and from school. I hated buses. They made me carsick from the jiggling and the smell of the fuel.
I had to get up for school earlier than in the past, partly because of having to be bussed to school and partly because I had to take better care of myself now that I was in my preteen years. My mom told me that I would have to shower every morning since my hormones were kicking in—that’s why I perspired so easily.
I was totally uncomfortable with my body. My feet didn’t want to respond to my own directions, and I tripped a lot. I constantly had a sprained ankle, wet armpits and things stuck in my braces. I felt awkward, smelly, insecure and like I had bad breath on a full-time basis.
In middle school, I would have to learn the rules and personalities of six different teachers instead of just one. There would be different kids in all my classes, kids I didn’t even know. I had never made friends very easily, and now I would have to start all over again.
I would have to run to my locker between classes, remember my combination, open it, put in the books from the last class and take out different books . . . and make it to the next class all within five minutes!
I was also scared because of some stories I had heard about the first day of middle school, like being canned by the eighth-graders. That’s when a bunch of eighth-graders pick you up and put you in a trash can. I had also heard that when eighth-grade girls catch a new seventh-
grader in the girls’ bathroom alone, they smear her with lipstick. Neither one of these first-day activities sounded like something I wanted to take part in.
No one had ever told me that growing up was going to be so hard, so scary, so unwelcome, so . . . unexpected. I was the oldest kid in my family—in fact, in my entire neighborhood—and no one had been there before me, to help lead me through the challenges of middle school.
I was on my own.
The first day of school was almost everything I feared. I didn’t remember my combination. I wrote the combination on my hand, but my hand was so sweaty it came off. I was late to every class. I didn’t have enough time to finish my lunch; I had just sat down to eat when the bell rang to go back to class. I almost choked on my peanut butter and banana sandwich as I ran down the dreaded hallway. The classrooms and the teachers were a blur. I wasn’t sure what teacher went with which subject and they had all assigned homework . . . on the very first day of school! I couldn’t believe it.
But the first day wasn’t like my dream in another way. In my dream, all of the other kids had it together and I was the only one who was the nerd. In real life, I wasn’t the only one who was late for classes. Everyone else was late, too. No one could remember their combination either, except Ted Milliken, the kid who carried a briefcase to school. After most of the kids realized that everyone else was going through the same thing they were going through, we all started cracking up. We were bumping into each other in our rush to get to the next class, and books were flying everywhere. No one got canned or smeared—at least no one I knew. I still didn’t go into the girls’ bathroom alone, just in case. Yeah, there was laughter in the hallway, but most of it was the laughter of kids sharing a common experience: complete hysteria!