Stories About Facing Challenges, Realizing Dreams and Making a Difference

by Jack Canfield

  “No,” he said. I turned and walked away. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled.

  “We’re going,” he said. The respect that I had always felt for him forced me to follow. When we got out of the trees to where the picnic bench used to be, we began talking again. “I didn’t know it would be like that,” Joel said.

  “Everyone’s doing it, Joel,” I said. My voice cracked. “We’re the only ones not doing it.”

  “Not everyone’s doing it, Lance. I’m not. You’re not. We both have our lives ahead of us.”

  I nodded as we walked away.

  The streetlights glared down on us as we walked on those same sidewalks that we had passed over for so many years. I looked over at Joel. He stared down at the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets. I kept wondering why he had been the one who didn’t try the drugs. After all, he was always the risk taker. He was always the one who pushed himself to his limits just like that time on the swing.

  We reached my house. “I think I’m going to go home and sleep,” he said. I nodded.

  I pulled myself into my room through the window and collapsed onto my bed. What had kept Joel from doing what I had almost done? I wondered as I curled up in bed.

  Finally, I made sense of it all. Joel took risks, and he had taken the biggest risk of all. He hadn’t done what everybody else was doing. He had a sense of originality that drew all those who met him to admire him. He had what he wanted in life, and drugs would only set him back.

  I looked over at a picture of Joel and me on my dresser. In the picture we were both kids, swinging on the swings, laughing our heads off. That’s when I knew that we could get higher than any of those kids who were stumbling through the trees behind us, just by being ourselves.

  Lance Johnson, fourteen

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: For the straight scoop on drugs, log on to: www.kidshealth.org (key word search: “drugs”).]

  Hot Potato/Cold Potato

  Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

  Jane Howard

  “I hate you!” I yelled, as I ran up the stairs to my room. Throwing open my dresser drawers, I pulled out a clean T-shirt and jeans, threw them in my backpack and ran back down the steps. Mom and Dad stood there, looking like they were in shock.

  “Where are you going?” Mom asked.

  “Anywhere but here,” I shouted as I ran out the door. They weren’t fast enough to grab me, and I slipped away into the night. It was cold, but my hot temper warmed me, and I didn’t feel it. Not at first, anyway.

  I hit the streets with my thumb out. Hitchhiking wasn’t safe, but I didn’t care. It was the only way I knew, at fourteen years old, to get away from them. We’d moved three times in the last four years, so I was always the new kid in class, the one who didn’t know what chapter we were working on or what project was due next week. I was always playing catch-up and trying to fit in.

  Worse than trying to fit in at school was trying to make new friends wherever we moved. There were cliques of popular students who had known each other since grade school. Then there were the geeks and jocks who just didn’t seem to interest me. I wasn’t athletic and didn’t excel at anything, really. Just an average high school kid looking for friends. Deep down inside, I knew my parents loved me, just like God loved me, but it wasn’t enough.

  I slept curled up on a park bench the first night I took off. It was hard as a rock, and I was surprised to find that I wasn’t alone. With my arms wrapped tightly around me for warmth, I huddled on the bench closest to the streetlight. Peeking through half-closed eyes, I could see other homeless people just like me, only they looked like they’d been there a long, long time. Some of them looked kind of scary, with dirty beards and baggy clothes. Some pushed grocery carts filled with their entire life’s treasure. I didn’t sleep much that night, and when the sun rose, I washed up in the park’s restroom and hit the road.

  By the end of the second day, I’d made my way to another city sixty-five miles away where I found a halfway house for runaways. I was tired, cold and hungry. By the time I got there, the kitchen was closed. All that was left on the table was a cold potato. I lifted it to my lips and bit into the wrinkled skin. It was crumbly and dry and stuck in my throat when I tried to swallow. That night I slept on a cot in a room with four other runaways. It wasn’t a whole lot better than the park. The cot was hard and the blanket was scratchy, and those other kids looked like they’d been there a long, long time. I tossed and turned all night.

  The next day, I changed into the only clean clothes I had and was shown how to use the washer and dryer to do my own laundry.

  “The soap is over there,” Carly told me. She was one of the other four runaways in my room. “Don’t use too much, just half a scoop is all you need.”

  I wanted to ask her how long she’d been there, but she interrupted my thoughts.

  “I’ve been here almost four months now,” Carly said. “We have rules for what you can and can’t do, so you better get used to it. You can’t use the laundry before 8:00 in the morning and you can’t watch TV after 10:00 at night. You have to be down at the kitchen table right at 12:00 and 5:00, or you don’t eat, and you have to rotate chores every week. This is my week on kitchen duty. I help make lunches and dinners, and I clean up afterward. So, don’t go makin’ a big mess in there.”

  “When are you going home?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. My parents know I’m here but won’t come by to even talk to me, and so what! You got something to say about that?”

  Carly glared at me as she talked.

  “No,” I responded, but I felt sad for Carly. Her parents didn’t even care! I was scared. Maybe my parents didn’t care, either.

  Three days later, my dad showed up at the front door of the halfway house. I don’t know how he found out I was there, but part of me was glad he did, though I wouldn’t admit it out loud. After gathering my few things, we drove home in silence. I could almost see the questions running through his head. Why did she run away from home? What was so awful there that we couldn’t talk about it? I could see by the look on his face that he felt responsible for all my anger and sadness. I regretted shouting at my parents the night I ran away. It wasn’t their fault that I felt this way.

  I had a long time to think as we drove those many miles home, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen all the things Dad had done for the family. He was trying to make a better life for us, moving us from one city to the next so he could get a better job. He was doing his best to put clothes on my back and shoes on my feet. It was up to me to make the best of a new school and to open up to new classmates. Hanging my head in the halls and not talking to anyone who even said “hi” wouldn’t help me make friends. Maybe I could make more of an effort to reach out to others.

  When we finally reached our house, Mom opened the front door as we walked up the stairs. I smelled a roast cooking and knew there’d be hot baked potatoes to go with it. As I stepped inside, she opened her arms wide and I fell into them. Dad was right behind me and put his arms around both of us. Ordinarily, I’d pull away, but this time I didn’t.

  They both released me a few moments later, and that’s when I saw the tears in Mom’s eyes. I lowered my head and blinked twice really fast, trying to hide my own tears. I made a promise to myself not to hurt them like that again. They were doing the best they could. It was up to me to meet them halfway.

  I knew the changes I had to make wouldn’t take place overnight, but as I looked at my parents and felt the warmth in my house, I realized there’s no place like home.

  B. J. Taylor

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: If you or someone you know is considering running away from home, please log on to www.covenanthouse.org/nineline/kid.html or call the NINELINE Hotline at 1-800-999-9999. It’s free, it’s confidential and it’s 24/7! ]

  Locks of Love

  To find out what one is fitted to do, and
to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.

  John Dewey

  My cousin Patricia was more like my mother, my sister and my best friend all wrapped into one. When I was born, my mom and I lived with my Aunt Mary and my cousins Patricia and Elizabeth. Throughout my first year of life, Patricia, who was about nine years older than me, took care of me pretty often. After we moved on our own, Patricia would come and stay at our house a lot. We were a really close family, so we saw each other often.

  When I was three, she found out that both she and her sister had colon cancer. Luckily, they were able to have it removed and ended up being fine.

  A couple of years later, when I was about six, Patricia began having a lot of head pain. She told her mom, and they went to a doctor who said it might be cancer. He did some tests, and then a few days later the test results showed that she did have cancer. They weren’t sure how advanced it was, but it got bad fast. She had to undergo radiation therapy, and within a few months, all of her long, pretty hair had fallen out—it was just gone. I felt so bad for her. I didn’t know what to do for her that would help in any way.

  By the time I was in fourth grade, she had been through about six brain surgeries. The doctors gave her steroids to help, but they only worked for a little bit.

  Then, the following year when she was only nineteen and I was ten, she passed on as she lay in her bed holding her favorite teddy bear.

  It hurt me so badly to know that such a good, warmhearted, loving and caring person could be taken away from all our hearts like that. If I could do anything or take back what had happened, I would have.

  About one-and-a-half years after Patricia passed away, I heard about an organization called Locks of Love that makes wigs for people who lose their hair due to cancer treatments. My aunt told me that Patricia had a wig that she often wore, that had been given to her from Locks of Love.

  I really liked what they did for people like Patricia, so I decided that I would donate some of my hair to them. I took really good care of my hair for several months in order to be able to donate the minimum of one-and-a-half feet of hair. Then I made an appointment to have my hair cut off and I donated it to Locks of Love in memory of my cousin, Patricia Vanoni Petree.

  Even though I couldn’t think of anything that I could do for Patricia while she was sick, I am glad that I can help someone else who is suffering like she did. I’m also comforted by knowing that my cousin—who was like my sister, mother and best friend all in one—would be proud of me.

  Amanda Macht, eleven

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: For information about donating to Locks of Love, check their Web site at www.locksoflove.org or call toll free 1-888-896-1588.]

  Uncle Richie’s Lesson

  Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of.

  English Proverb

  When I was younger, before I started school, I would be so excited when my mom would tell me that we were going to Grandma and Uncle Richie’s house. My Uncle Richie was so much fun, and he always kept me busy. I always loved to see my grandma, too. My sister, Kelly, who is three years older than I am, was usually at school when my mom and I went to visit them. My younger brother, Kevin, hadn’t been born yet. So, I feel very fortunate to have spent as much time with Uncle Richie and Grandma as I did.

  Ever since I can remember, my uncle and my grandma had health problems and were in wheelchairs. They had also been smoking for a long time. When I was about four, my sister and I already knew that smoking was bad for you. We got this idea because my sister had seen a movie at school about smoking and told me all about it. Smoking cigarettes or cigars can cause many diseases that people can die from. It kills brain cells, damages body tissue and often eventually causes cancer. We didn’t want our grandma having those bad things happen to her body, so we decided to help her quit. We actually begged our grandma to stop smoking. Begging does work sometimes, because after that, Grandma quit—or at least she didn’t smoke when we were around, and we were there an awful lot. My sister and I feel that Grandma lived longer because she quit smoking. It will always be one of my greatest accomplishments in life, and I’ll always look up to my grandma for having the strength to quit a very addictive habit.

  Then we tried to convince our uncle to quit. I was always proud of Uncle Richie for everything he did, but I wasn’t proud of the fact that he smoked. I was very proud of my mom, though, because she never started. My mom and my uncle spent a lot of time together as kids and did a lot of the same things. This was one of the few that they disagreed on. We tried and tried—you wouldn’t believe how hard we tried to tell him it was bad, but he just told us he couldn’t stop, that it was too hard for him.

  Later on, when I was in about second grade, smoking all of those cigarettes caused Uncle Richie to develop heart problems. An artery in his leg was not circulating blood like it was supposed to. Part of this was because of smoking; part was because of not eating very healthy foods. His leg turned all purple and blue and was not a very pleasant thing to look at. As I said, he didn’t exactly eat the healthiest, but smoking didn’t help one bit. Then he started losing his memory. I would break out in tears every time I saw him because he couldn’t even remember my name, his own niece!

  Uncle Richie got so sick that he had to go to hospice, a place where they take care of people who are dying. Then one day, my mom told me that my Uncle Richie had passed away. I cried for so long that, in the end, I had no tears left to shed.

  Even though my Uncle Richie left us so early, he taught me many things. He did teach me some funny things, like never to put my finger up my nose because it could get stuck, but he also taught me a more important thing. He taught me that if you make a choice to never start smoking, then you have a better shot at a future. He also taught me to live life to its fullest because you never know when it’s going to end.

  I believe strongly in not smoking, thanks to my Uncle Richie, who I will always love dearly. I hope that now his story can teach many others that the choice they make when someone asks them if they want to smoke can be a matter of life and death.

  Michelle Collins, eleven

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: For facts and more information about smoking, log on to www.cdc.gov/tobacco/tips4youth.htm.]

  Buckling Up

  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

  Henry de Bracton

  It was my seventh-grade year, and I had just started middle school. This was also the year that my brother, Chris, got his driver’s license. So, every day after school, he would pick me up and we would go home together. Sometimes it was fun to goof off in the car, like hang out the window and yell at friends who had to walk home. One thing was for sure—I was never really concerned with wearing my seatbelt. No matter how many times my parents told me to wear my seatbelt in the car, I never thought it was necessary. I just knew that nothing would ever happen to me.

  One day, Chris picked me up late because I had a choir audition after school. “How did the audition go?” he asked. “It was fun. I think I got the part!” I exclaimed excitedly as I got in the car.

  As I settled into my seat, I had this distinct feeling that I should wear my seatbelt. At first I ignored it, but then I decided to put it on. It won’t kill me to wear it this once, I thought to myself.

  Not more than 20 seconds after I snapped the buckle, a car came barreling out from nowhere and sent us spinning down a hill.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” Chris screamed, as he was thrown forward. I also flew forward into my seatbelt. When we reached the bottom of the hill, I looked over to see if he was all right.

  Miraculously, both of us were okay except for some bruising. We climbed out to inspect the damage and were shocked to find that the car was totaled.

  The guy who hit us had been going sixty miles per hour in a thirty-five mile per hour zone.

  Later on, I found out that if I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I would have been thrown through the front windshield and may
not have survived.

  I don’t know what made me want to wear my seatbelt that day, but now I know just how true my thought, It won’t kill me to wear it just this once, was. It saved my life.

  I no longer go anywhere in a car without first buckling up.

  Cassandra Scheidies

  Angel

  Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.

  Jean Paul Richter

  Two days before my birthday, I got an e-mail that would first make me cry and then make me smile.

  Patrick was a kid that I knew from 4-H. We became friends when I taught him how to show horses and he showed my horse in the Junior Division at the County Horse Show. We weren’t “close” friends, but he was a pretty cool guy. I mean, how many guys like to show horses and will let a girl teach them how to do it? Not very many.

  After the horse show and his leaving the club, we kind of lost contact. He sent me a Christmas card with his email address in it, but I put off e-mailing him. I thought, How much stuff would we be able to talk about anyway?

  His e-mail address was in my address book, and when I changed servers, my new address went to everyone on my list. A few days later I got a reply from Patrick. It was brief; he asked me how I was and told me that he had started riding lessons again. He also asked me how Theo, my horse, was and he gave me his e-mail address. He ended with:

  Hope you have a nice day. Patrick.

  I replied to his e-mail, just small talk, and my e-mail looked something like this:

  Hi! Nice to hear from you. That’s so cool you’re taking lessons. I’m really sorry that I didn’t e-mail you at all during the winter. School has been really busy for me this year. Theo is doing good. He still knocks my radio off the stall door when I have the music on too loud. You’ll have to come out and visit sometime.