The Best of Reader's Digest

by Editors of Reader's Digest

  Originally published in the October 1998 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  • YOUR TRUE STORIES •

  13 THINGS I’LL TELL MY DAUGHTER (SOMEDAY)

  1. It’s OK to date frogs; they’ll help you recognize your prince. 2. Confidence is the best accessory. 3. Even if you have unlimited texts, call. 4. Heartbreak doesn’t last forever, but it sure can feel like it. 5. Your life will not end because we don’t buy a car when you turn 16. 6. Work like a dog in your 20s. 7. Know one good dirty joke and one good clean one and the right times to tell each. 8. Read more than you watch TV. 9. If you’re ever in A LOT of trouble, ask me to tell you the Aunt Sarah story. This will only work once. 10. Making mistakes is easy. Admitting them is difficult. 11. Vulnerable doesn’t equal weak. 12. Go to college, even if it’s just for the life experience (but we’re only paying for the first four years). 13. I love you unconditionally.

  —Aimee Harris Atlanta, Georgia

  TWO SHOES

  I was having the time of my life with the incredible fifth-grade class I had this year. They were full of compassion and creativity. One day a student raised her hand and asked if I had realized I was wearing two different shoes. Laughter filled the room and I blushed with embarrassment. The next gesture is the part I will never forget. The students proceeded to trade shoes with each other to match my crazy situation.

  —Teresa Kiefer Genoa City, Wisconsin

  Stowaway!

  by Armando Socarras Ramirez, as told to Denis Fodor and John Reddy

  Two teens risk their lives in a daring attempt to escape Cuba and find freedom in America.

  The jet engines of the Iberia Airlines DC-8 thundered in earsplitting crescendo as the big plane taxied toward where we huddled in the tall grass just off the end of the runway at Havana’s José Martí Airport. For months, my friend Jorge Pérez Blanco and I had been planning to stow away in a wheel well on this flight, No. 904, Iberia’s once-weekly, nonstop run from Havana to Madrid. Now, in the late afternoon of last June 3, our moment had come.

  We realized that we were pretty young to be taking such a big gamble; I was 17, Jorge 16. But we were both determined to escape from Cuba, and our plans had been carefully made. We knew that departing airliners taxied to the end of the 11,500-foot runway, stopped momentarily after turning around, then roared at full throttle down the runway to take off. We wore rubber-soled shoes to aid us in crawling up the wheels and carried ropes to secure ourselves inside the wheel well. We had also stuffed cotton in our ears as protection against the shriek of the four jet engines. Now we lay sweating with fear as the massive craft swung into its about-face, the jet blast flattening the grass all around us. “Let’s run!” I shouted to Jorge.

  We dashed onto the runway and sprinted toward the left-hand wheels of the momentarily stationary plane. As Jorge began to scramble up the 42-inch-high tires, I saw there was not room for us both in the single well. “I’ll try the other side!” I shouted. Quickly I climbed onto the right wheels, grabbed a strut and, twisting and wriggling, pulled myself into the semi-dark well. The plane began rolling immediately, and I grabbed some machinery to keep from falling out. The roar of the engines nearly deafened me.

  As we became airborne, the huge double wheels, scorching hot from takeoff, began folding into the compartment. I tried to flatten myself against the overhead as they came closer and closer; then, in desperation, I pushed at them with my feet. But they pressed powerfully upward, squeezing me terrifyingly against the roof of the well. Just when I felt that I would be crushed, the wheels locked in place and the bay doors beneath them closed, plunging me into darkness. So there I was, my five-foot-four-inch, 140-pound frame literally wedged in amid a spaghetti-like maze of conduits and machinery. I could not move enough to tie myself to anything, so I stuck my rope behind a pipe.

  Then, before I had time to catch my breath, the bay doors suddenly dropped open again and the wheels stretched out into their landing position. I held on for dear life, swinging over the abyss, wondering if I had been spotted, if even now the plane was turning back to hand me over to Castro’s police.

  By the time the wheels began retracting again, I had seen a bit of extra space among all the machinery where I could safely squeeze. Now I knew there was room for me, even though I could scarcely breathe. After a few minutes, I touched one of the tires and found that it had cooled off. I swallowed some aspirin tablets against the head-splitting noise and began to wish that I had worn something warmer than my light sport shirt and green fatigues.

  Up in the cockpit of Flight 904, Capt. Valentín Vara del Rey, 44, had settled into the routine of the overnight flight, which would last 8 hours and 20 minutes. Takeoff had been normal, with the aircraft and its 147 passengers, plus a crew of ten lifting off at 170 m.p.h. But, right after lift-off, something unusual had happened. One of three red lights on the instrument panel had remained lighted, indicating improper retraction of the landing gear.

  “Are you having difficulty?” the control tower asked.

  “Yes,” replied Vara del Rey. “There is an indication that the right wheel hasn’t closed properly. I’ll repeat the procedure.”

  The captain re-lowered the landing gear, then raised it again. This time the red light blinked out.

  Dismissing the incident as a minor malfunction, the captain turned his attention to climbing to assigned cruising altitude. On leveling out, he observed that the temperature outside was 41 degrees F. Inside, the pretty stewardess began serving dinner to the passengers.

  Shivering uncontrollably from the bitter cold, I wondered if Jorge had made it into the other wheel well, and began thinking about what had brought me to this desperate situation. I thought about my parents and my girl, María Esther, and wondered what they would think when they learned what I had done.

  My father is a plumber, and I have four brothers and a sister. We are poor, like most Cubans. Our house in Havana has just one large room; 11 people live in it—or did. Food was scarce and strictly rationed. About the only fun I had was playing baseball and walking with María Esther along the seawall. When I turned 16, the government shipped me off to vocational school in Betancourt, a sugarcane village in Matanzas Province. There I was supposed to learn welding, but classes were often interrupted to send us off to plant cane.

  Young as I was, I was tired of living in a state that controlled everyone’s life. I dreamed of freedom. I wanted to become an artist and live in the United States, where I had an uncle. I knew that thousands of Cubans had got to America and done well there. As the time approached when I would be drafted, I thought more and more of trying to get away. But how? I knew that two planeloads of people are allowed to leave Havana for Miami each day, but there is a waiting list of 800,000 for these flights. Also, if you sign up to leave, the government looks on you as a gusano—a worm—and life becomes even less bearable.

  My hopes seemed futile. Then I met Jorge at a Havana baseball game. After the game we got to talking. I found out that Jorge, like myself, was disillusioned with Cuba. “The system takes away your freedom—forever,” he complained.

  Jorge told me about the weekly flight to Madrid. Twice we went to the airport to reconnoiter. Once a DC-8 took off and flew directly over us; the wheels were still down, and we could see into the well compartments. “There’s enough room in there for me,” I remember saying.

  These were my thoughts as I lay in the freezing darkness more than five miles above the Atlantic Ocean. By now we had been in the air about an hour, and I was getting lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. Was it really only a few hours earlier, that I had bicycled through the rain with Jorge and hidden in the grass? Was Jorge safe? My parents? María Esther? I drifted into unconsciousness.

  The sun rose over the Atlantic like a great golden globe, its rays glinting off the silver-and-red fuselage of Iberia’s DC-8 as it crossed the European coast high over Portugal. With the end of the 5,563-mile flight in sight, Captain Vara del Rey began his descent toward Madrid’s B
arajas Airport. Arrival would be at 8 a.m. local time, the captain told his passengers over the intercom, and the weather in Madrid was sunny and pleasant.

  Shortly after passing over Toledo, Vara del Rey let down his landing gear. As always, the maneuver was accompanied by a buffeting as the wheels hit the slipstream and a 200 m.p.h. turbulence swirled through the wheel wells. Now the plane went into its final approach; now, a spurt of flame and smoke from the tires as the DC-8 touched down at about 140 m.p.h.

  It was a perfect landing—no bumps. After a brief post-flight check, Vara del Rey walked down the ramp steps and stood by the nose of the plane waiting for a car to pick him up, along with his crew.

  Nearby, there was a sudden, soft plop as the frozen body of Armando Socarras fell to the concrete apron beneath the plane. José Rocha Lorenzana, a security guard, was the first to reach the crumpled figure. “When I touched his clothes, they were frozen as stiff as wood,” Rocha said. “All he did was make a strange sound, a kind of moan.”

  “I couldn’t believe it at first,” Vara del Rey said when told of Armando. “But then I went over to see him. He had ice over his nose and mouth. And his color…” As he watched the unconscious boy being bundled into a truck, the captain kept exclaiming to himself, “Impossible! Impossible!”

  The first thing I remember after losing consciousness was hitting the ground at the Madrid airport. Then I blacked out again and woke up later at the Gran Hospital de la Beneficencia in downtown Madrid, more dead than alive. When they took my temperature, it was so low that it did not even register on the thermometer. “Am I in Spain?” was my first question. And then, “Where’s Jorge?” (Jorge is believed to have been knocked down by the jet blast while trying to climb into the other wheel well, and to be in prison in Cuba.)

  Doctors said later that my condition was comparable to that of a patient undergoing “deep freeze” surgery—a delicate process performed only under carefully controlled conditions. Dr. José María Pajares, who cared for me, called my survival a “medical miracle,” and, in truth, I feel lucky to be alive.

  A few days after my escape, I was up and around the hospital, playing cards with my police guard and reading stacks of letters from all over the world. I especially liked one from a girl in California.

  “You are a hero,” she wrote, “but not very wise.” My uncle, Elo Fernández, who lives in New Jersey, telephoned and invited me to come to the United States to live with him. The International Rescue Committee arranged my passage and has continued to help me.

  I am fine now. I live with my uncle and go to school to learn English. I still hope to study to be an artist. I want to be a good citizen and contribute something to this country, for I love it here. You can smell freedom in the air.

  I often think of my friend Jorge. We both knew the risk we were taking, and that we might be killed in our attempt to escape Cuba. But it seemed worth the chance. Even knowing the risks, I would try to escape again if I had to.

  Originally published in the January 1970 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  Armando Socarras Ramirez is now 68 years old and lives in Virginia with his wife. He retired from the transportation industry. Ramirez and his wife have four children and 11 grandchildren. He will appear on the upcoming program “Greatest Escapes of All Time” on the History Channel.

  Humor Hall of Fame

  Cartoon by Mike Baldwin

  “You might be overthinking it. Sometimes a belly rub is just a belly rub.”

  IT’S A GOOD THING SNAKES AND DOGS DON’T INTERBREED. NOBODY WANTS A LOYAL SNAKE.

  —ROY BLOUNT JR., HUMORIST

  My granddaughter loves my puppy so much, she asked, “When you die, can I have Romeo?”

  “Of course,” I said. She was thrilled. “Oh, I can’t wait!”

  —BARBARA CORREY WOODBURY, TENNESSEE

  Dogs have no money. Isn’t that amazing? They’re broke their entire lives. But they get by. You know why dogs have no money? No pockets.

  —JERRY SEINFELD, COMEDIAN

  PHOTO OF LASTING INTEREST

  Sleeping Soldier

  In 2008, photographer Tim Hetherington took a series of photos of sleeping soldiers at a remote American outpost in Afghanistan called Restrepo. Journalist Sebastian Junger, who codirected an Oscar-nominated documentary about Restrepo with Hetherington, says, “War is fought by vulnerable boys who are desperately trying to be tough, grown men. This image shows that truth much more powerfully than any combat photo ever could. [As Tim told me,] ‘This is how their mothers see them.’ ” Hetherington was killed in 2011 while on assignment in Libya. He was 40. Photograph by Tim Hetherington/Magnum Photos

  • YOUR TRUE STORIES •

  PICTURE PERFECT MOMENT

  On a cool October afternoon I dropped my seventeen-year-old, Mayree, off for volleyball practice. She jogged off toward the field, then suddenly turned back, ran to the car, and leaned in through the driver’s side window. “See y’all in a few,” she said waving goodbye to her baby brother and sister. Standing outside the window, her ponytail swaying slowly in the breeze, bathed in the glow of the setting sun behind her, she looked like an angel encircled by a golden halo; like a Fra Angelico painting. I don’t recall if I told her how much I loved her, or how proud I was of the amazing young woman she had become, before driving away that day. I never saw her alive again. But I thank God every day for leaving me with that beautiful final image of her.

  —Vickey Malone Kennedy Norman, Oklahoma

  HAPPY RETURNS

  A long flight of weathered steps led to a hollow wooden door with rusty numbers beckoning us into Room 1108. Inside we barely noticed the faded wood paneling, lumpy queen-sized bed, and thin, tacky carpet. We could see the expanse of seashore from our perch and easily wander down the access path to feel the sand between our toes. We returned again and again until the burgeoning resort tore down our orange-shingled eyesore. Forty years later, my husband periodically sends me a short e-mail that declares the time: 11:08. “I love you, too,” I write back.

  —Laurie Olson Dayton, Nevada

  To Do or Not to Do

  by Mary Roach

  She keeps lists, he doesn’t. Can this marriage be saved?

  There are three kinds of people in this world: 1) People who make lists, 2) People who don’t make lists, and 3) People who carve tiny Nativity scenes out of pecan hulls. I’m sorry, there isn’t really a third category; it’s just that a workable list needs a minimum of three items, I feel. I am, as you might have guessed, a person who makes lists: daily To Do lists, long-term To Do lists, shopping lists, packing lists. I am married to a man whose idea of a list is a corner torn off a newspaper page, covered with words too hastily written to later decipher, and soon misplaced or dropped on the floor. Every now and then I’ll discover one of Ed’s lists in some forgotten corner of the house: Rescrangen polfiter, it will say. Pick up grellion. Bregoo! underlined twice.

  It isn’t entirely accurate to say that Ed has no formal To Do list. He does. It’s just that it isn’t Ed that makes it, it’s me. It’s easy enough, as the same ten or 12 items, mostly involving home-repair projects abandoned midterm, have been on it for years. I once wrote it out for him and put it on the side of the fridge. When I glanced at it some months later, nothing had been crossed off, though he’d added a few of his own: Make violin. Cure diabetes. Split atom.

  * * *

  I make lists to keep my anxiety level down. If I write down 15 things to be done, I lose that vague, nagging sense that there are an overwhelming number of things to be done, all of which are on the brink of being forgotten. Ed, on the other hand, controls his anxiety precisely by forgetting them. If they’re not on some numbered piece of paper, they don’t exist. So there’s no reason why he shouldn’t come home and turn on the game. People like me really gum up the works for people like Ed by calling them to see if they’ve gotten around to any of the things on the To Do list we’re secretly keeping for them.

  Here’s th
e sick thing: I don’t really care whether Ed has done the things on this list. I just want to be able to cross them off. My friend Jeff best summed up the joy of crossing off: “No matter how unproductive my week has been, I have a sense of accomplishment.” Jeff actually tried to convince me that the adjective listless derived from the literal definition “having no lists.”

  I don’t really care whether Ed has done the things on this list.

  It is possible, I’ll admit, to go overboard. I have a list of party guests in my desk drawer. Every so often I take it out, add people we’ve met, cross off couples that have moved away, and then put it back in my drawer. We’re never actually going to have this party; we’re just going to keep updating the list—which, for people like me, is a party all by itself.

  My husband is the first person I ever met who doesn’t even make a shopping list. Ed prefers to go up and down the aisles, figuring he’ll see the things we need. The problem is that he has no idea whether we actually need them that week, and so it is that we have six cans of water chestnuts and enough Tabasco sauce to sober up the population of Patoka, Indiana, on any given New Year’s Day. It seems to be a male pride thing. “Men don’t want to admit that they can’t remember everything,” says my friend Ron. Ron finds shopping lists limiting. “Take M&M’s,” he says. “Those are never going to be on the list.”

  Ed agrees. He says the things on lists are always chores and downers. Ed wants a To Do list that says, 1) Giants game, 2) Nap, 3) Try new cheese-steak place. Meanwhile, the polfiter sits unscrangened.

  Originally published in the June 2002 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.