Stories About Facing Challenges, Realizing Dreams and Making a Difference

by Jack Canfield

  Our teacher, Miss Finkelor, was really awesome about most things, but the one thing she was majorly serious about was not writing notes to each other during class. Everyone did it anyway. Except me. My only shot at self-esteem was being teacher’s pet, and I excelled at it. I loved it so much it didn’t even bother me when kids teased me about being the teacher’s favorite.

  It was a huge decision for me to go against the one thing that Miss Finkelor detested—note passing. But I knew that there was no other way to tell Mike Daniels about how I felt—and I also knew that if I never told him, I was going to burst . . . or maybe even freak out. I vowed to do it on Monday morning.

  So, first thing Monday morning, in my very best printing, I wrote, “I love you.” That was it. Nothing else—no flowers, no poetry—just, “I love you.” I passed it to Dianne, who sat between me and Mike Daniels, and whispered, “Give this to Mike Daniels,” trying to look really casual, like it was a request to borrow a book from him or something. I held my breath as I watched him open and read it—then read it again. Then he folded it up and put it into his pocket. Oh my God, what have I done? What if he shows it to his buds at recess? They’ll all laugh their heads off. I’m a fool. An idiot. Why did I tell him? I felt like I was going to throw up.

  I was so involved in feeling like I was going to hurl, that I didn’t even feel Dianne punching me in the arm. Then she shoved a note in my hand. Slowly, I opened it. It was my own note. Great, he thought it was so stupid that he sent it back to me, I thought. Then it dawned on me—he had written something on the back of it. “I like you, too. I’m glad we’re friends.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was so relieved that he didn’t trash me—that could have easily happened if Mike Daniels hadn’t been a really nice guy. With that one little gesture of kindness, Mike Daniels made me feel special—and, not only that, but I felt that somehow, he had seen the real me hidden in the body of a fifth-grade geek.

  I kept that note for years—all the way through the eighth grade. Whenever I felt bad about myself, I would reread Mike Daniels’ note and remember that act of kindness. It didn’t matter to me what inspired him—if it was pity, or the recognition of things to come—that note gave me strength to go through the challenges of the tough years that followed fifth grade.

  Patty Hansen

  Not My Boyfriend

  That’s the penalty we have to pay for our acts of foolishness—someone else always suffers for them.

  Alfred Sutro

  “Jason likes you,” Kellie said, as she sat down next to me on the bus. “He wants to know if you’ll go out with him.”

  “Jason?” I said, surprised. After all, I knew who he was since we rode the same bus to and from school, but I didn’t really know him. He was in seventh grade—a year younger than me—and we had never even talked to each other. I had certainly never thought of him as a boyfriend or anything.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I said. I really couldn’t imagine being his girlfriend. But, on the other hand, some of my friends had boyfriends and others had guys who liked them. I wanted one, too.

  When the bus reached my stop, I practically danced down the street to my house. “You must have had a good day,” my mother smiled when she saw me.

  “I did!” I said. “Jason likes me! He wants to be my boyfriend!”

  After explaining to my mother who Jason was and reassuring her that, no, I wasn’t too young to have a boyfriend, I decided to say yes to Jason. It will be the most romantic day of my life, I said to myself.

  The next morning, I spent extra time on my hair and put on my favorite perfume. Kellie and Jason were both already in their seats when I got on the bus.

  “Well?” Kellie asked, leaning over the back of her seat. I wondered why she, another seventh-grader I knew only as someone on my bus, suddenly had such an interest in my love life.

  “Yeah, I guess I’ll go out with him,” I responded, trying not to sound too excited.

  She got up and headed to the back of the bus, where Jason sat with some other seventh-grade guys. “She said yes,” she told him. Suddenly, the bus erupted with chants of, “Whooooo . . . Carol and Jason.” I didn’t pay any attention. I have a boyfriend, I thought to myself all the way to school. I’m going out with someone!

  Before going into school, I stood talking to some of my friends. Of course, the topic of conversation was my new boyfriend. Every few minutes, I glanced over at Jason who was talking to his friends at the other end of the sidewalk.

  I wasn’t sure if I should go over and talk to him. I wanted to, but the only thing I could think of to say was “So, you’re my boyfriend,” and since I didn’t want to sound stupid, I stayed put.

  Finally, I saw him walking over. He was looking right at me, so I broke from my friends and smiled at him. He didn’t smile back, though. Instead, he stopped and said, “I don’t want to go out with you.”

  “You don’t?” I choked out, trying to catch my breath.

  “No,” he replied. “Kellie was bugging me yesterday. She kept asking me who I like, so when she asked if I liked you, I said yes just to shut her up. Sorry if you thought I was serious.”

  Then the bell rang and everyone headed inside. I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. All the guys snickered as they walked by me and I wanted to just crawl into a hole—to go home, get into bed and never leave my room again. I walked slowly into my classroom, wondering why the day that was supposed to be the most romantic of my life had turned into the most humiliating.

  I couldn’t concentrate all day, and I stared into space through most of my classes, but none of my teachers seemed to mind. The story had gotten around, so they probably all knew what was wrong.

  When I got home I slammed the door of my room and cried for hours, not because that particular guy didn’t want to go out with me, but because I felt so stupid to have created an entire romance with Jason based on a conversation with Kellie. When I realized that I wasn’t upset about Jason not being my boyfriend, I stopped crying.

  In the six months that remained until I graduated from eighth grade and moved on to high school, I never talked to Jason again. In fact, if we hadn’t been on the same bus, I probably would have forgotten all about him. I’m glad I didn’t, though. The next year, a girl I knew slightly told me that she knew a guy who liked me.

  “If he likes me, he’ll have to tell me himself,” I replied.

  And he did.

  Carol Miller

  © ZITS Partnership. Reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate.

  Without the Kisses

  There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.

  William M. Bulger

  In the eighth grade, all I wanted was to be alone with my first boyfriend, Mark. His family had just moved to our town and I barely knew him, but he had a nice smile, and my friend Victoria thought he was cute, too. The second week after he started at our school, he asked me to go out, and I said yes.

  Mark and I didn’t talk much, but he gave me his navy blue and white jacket to wear and waited for me at my locker each day after sixth period drama class.

  Over the next few weeks, we went to each other’s house a few times, but our parents would never leave us alone. At Mark’s house, we made popcorn and watched family movies with his mom and dad. His mom called our movie nights “double dates,” which made Mark blush and then roll his eyes when she wasn’t looking. My parents were just as paranoid, and even more embarrassing. My dad was so weird about me going with a guy that he had a mental block against Mark’s name. My mother was so sure we shouldn’t be alone together that she once decided to rearrange the kitchen cabinets at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, just so she could keep an eye on us in the adjacent family room.

  It seemed like my older brother, Dirk, was always allowed to be alone with his girlfriend, Maggie. I could only imagine what they were doing and I thought, If Dirk g
ets to be alone with his girlfriend then I should get to be alone with Mark.

  At Mark’s locker the next day, I told him what I had been thinking about, and his brown eyes bulged from his head. He told me he would come up with a plan to get us alone that weekend. The rest of the week seemed like a month. I kept imagining how his lips would feel when they touched mine. I had watched actors kiss on TV practically every day, but wished I had paid better attention to how they did it. I worried that my lips would get dry, that my braces would cut him and that my tongue wouldn’t know what to do. The more I thought about it, the more the whole thing grossed me out. But my friends Victoria and Shauna had both been kissing boys since the seventh grade, and I felt like a prude around them. It was all they ever talked about, it seemed. I figured I should just get it over with once and for all.

  That Saturday, Mark told his parents we were going for “an evening stroll” to feed the ducks at the lake a block from his house. In preparation for the big night, I took forever to curl my long hair, but I didn’t use a lot of hair spray just in case he wanted to run his fingers through my hair. I wasn’t sure why he’d do that, but people were always doing that in the movies.

  The sun had just set when we made our way down his street, pretend-balancing on the center white line in the road. Three houses down from Mark’s on the corner sat a pitch dark, vacant house under construction. That house was at the center of his plan, which I thought was brilliant until we got there and saw how creepy it was. Mark quietly led me through the side gate and across a pile of dirt that must have been part of the construction. I could feel dirt slipping into my sandals, grinding between my heel and sandal as we made our way to the back of the empty house. Mark yanked the chrome handle on the sliding glass door and pulled it open easily. I looked down to swat a mosquito dining on my leg and saw my heartbeat through my shirt.

  Inside, the music from a single cricket echoed around us, making the house seem bigger than it looked from the street. At first I wanted to go back to his house, but then Mark gently placed his hand on my shoulder and led me to a spot near the fireplace. Mark pulled two cement blocks across the floor, making a screeching noise so loud I could still hear it after it stopped. He placed the two blocks next to the fireplace and we sat. And sat. The amber light from the neighbor’s back porch placed a halo around Mark’s eager yet fearful face. He raised his eyebrows higher each time he looked over at me. I fidgeted with my pink and green friendship bracelet and tried to push the sand out of my sandals with my toes. Mark tapped out a drumbeat on his knee, but I could barely hear it because the cricket was so loud. It sounded like the cricket was sitting on my lap.

  How long are we going to just sit here? I thought. It seemed like forever until finally, Mark spoke. I nearly jumped when he turned toward me. He made such a quick move on the cement block that it sounded like he ripped a hole in his shorts. Then he looked deep into my eyes and whispered, “Is Mr. Bergman hard for Algebra One?”

  “Uh,” I looked down at my hands and realized that I’d tied a knot in the end of my friendship bracelet. “He’s hard, but he warns us about pop quizzes.”

  It turned out, he liked Mrs. Fir for English but thought Mr. Wright was an idiot with his horn-rimmed glasses and bad jokes. That started a long conversation about all of our teachers and their crazy quirks, and by the time we left that empty house, we were laughing so hard that we couldn’t hear the cricket anymore. I must have licked my lips a thousand times that night, thinking, At any moment, he’ll kiss me. But after all the anticipation, I’m glad he didn’t. Even with all the pressure from our friends at school, we managed to skip the kissing and just get to know one another. At least for that night.

  When it came down to it, we were too young for soap opera love scenes or swollen lips from kissing with braces on our teeth. That night, as we walked back to his house holding hands, I wondered if it was my hand or his that was so warm.

  Jennifer O’Neil

  3

  ON ACHIEVING

  DREAMS

  Inside of us there lives a light

  Burning like fire in the night.

  Gleaming down and lighting the way

  For hopes and dreams to shine someday.

  It gives a brilliance to our lives

  And sparkles like diamonds With a glowing light.

  So hold out your light

  For all to see,

  And never let go

  Your dreams are the key.

  Hannah A. Heninger, fourteen

  Reprinted by permission of Leigh Rubin and Creators Syndicate, Inc.

  Head-Butting the Wall

  Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.

  Anne Byrhhe

  I grew up in a small town in New Jersey where I felt bored and trapped. My family life was all about, “Mom works, Dad works and kids are expected to go to school.” My parents didn’t have the money to buy me stuff I got interested in, and we didn’t have any time to spend together except during meals. That didn’t cost anything or take up any extra time.

  I was angry and frustrated most of the time—it seemed that no matter what I did or said, I felt like I was head-butting the wall and getting nowhere. No one could get through—not my parents, my teachers or my guidance counselor. No one could help me.

  Then I started high school, and a lot of the people I knew began using drugs and alcohol. Because I wasn’t interested in that, I found myself on the outside of my peer group. I was totally alone and I hated the world.

  I started roaming the streets looking for trouble. I fought older, tougher guys around town and gained a reputation for being crazy. I’d take any dare. If someone said to me, “Smash your head on this rock for five bucks!” I would.

  I was well on my way to prison or the morgue when I stumbled on punk rock music. The whole idea of a punk lifestyle sounded cool. So, I spiked my hair and took on a whole new identity until, one day, some real punkers came up to me in the hall at school.

  “Hey, man, are you punk?”

  “Yeah, yeah, man, I’m punk,” I fumbled.

  “Oh, yeah? What bands do you like?”

  I didn’t know any bands—none.

  “Who do you listen to?” I didn’t know one band from the other. Then my eyes landed on their band-logo T-shirts.

  “Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, The Misfits . . .” I thought I had them fooled. But I was pretty much busted.

  “Stop looking at our shirts. You don’t really know any punk bands, do you?”

  Totally busted. Where do I go with this? I thought to myself. Before I could come up with a strategy, one of them dared me to come home with them to his house. We went down into his basement and they shaved my spikes off. Then they said I was really punk. The next thing I knew, I was meeting up with them after school and hanging out.

  Some of my new friends would occasionally get a hold of a skateboarding magazine, and they’d show me pictures of some decks. When I saw the boards, I connected. I became obsessed. I wanted to get my hands on a board and more of those magazines. One kid, the younger brother of one of my friends, had a stash. I cruised over to his house and knocked on the door.

  “Hey, man, can I take a look at some of your skateboard magazines?” I asked.

  This guy was hardcore. He wasn’t about to let me touch his prized possessions, but he let me stand on his back porch and look at them through his screen door as he turned the pages, one by one. That’s when I saw an article about street skating and a photo of a guy jumping off a car.

  “I can do that! I can totally do that,” I tried to convince him. He looked at me, doubting every word, but he got his board out and challenged me right then and there. I took the dare, grabbed the board and got up on his grandpa’s car. Slam! I hit the ground. I got back up. I went through the same thing over and over—biting dust every time. Then finally . . . I landed it!

  He screamed, “You did it! You’re a skateboarder!
”

  I was hooked, rushing on adrenaline. I wanted to experience it again and again.

  I began to follow a group of guys in my neighborhood that had boards. I’d beg them to let me skate. They treated me like dirt, but because they had boards, I took it.

  I had to figure out how I could get my own board. I finally conned my mom into giving me money for a board by promising her that it would be my one and only Christmas present. I ordered a board and when it arrived, I was totally stoked. Then my mom made me hand it over. Her words, “Sorry. You can’t have it until Christmas, Mike,” were torture.

  Weeks later, Christmas came and finally I got my board. I skated every spare second I could. I went from skating a few minutes a day to hours a day. I’d skate to and from school, after school, after dinner and after homework. When I started trying to skate the half pipe, I’d get nothing but grief about my style. I was doing everything I could just to gain the speed needed to get up the other side of the ramp. I’d flap my arms to get momentum. “Look at the chicken-man,” guys would taunt. I didn’t care—whatever it took, I’d try it. I lived and breathed skateboarding. It was my sanctuary and my salvation; it was my “thing.”

  I easily navigated the traps and pitfalls of high school and adolescence by just getting on my board and riding. But it wasn’t just the physical act of skateboarding that made an immediate and lasting impact on me; it was the entire subculture of doing your own thing. Instead of following the crowd, I had discovered my individuality. My small town that once felt full of dead-end streets suddenly opened up. I found a wide-open country of possibilities. At fourteen, that’s some vital stuff.