Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul (16 page)

CALVIN AND HOBBES. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

The Purple Belt

A few years ago, I organized the Kick Drugs Out of America Foundation. It is an organization designed to work with high-risk, inner-city children. The idea is to teach the kids martial arts, to help raise their self-esteem and instill discipline and respect for themselves and others. Many of the kids, boys as well as girls, come from broken homes and are having trouble in school and in their lives in general. I’m pleased to say that the program has been working phenomenally well. Most young people quickly adapt to the philosophy of the martial arts.

After more than thirty-five years in the martial arts, competing and training thousands of young people, there is one story that is engraved in my memory. It was told to me by Alice McCleary, one of my Kick Drugs Out of America Black Belt instructors.

One of her young students showed up for karate training without his purple belt. Alice reminded him that part of his responsibility as a student was to have his karate uniform and belt with him at all times.

“Where is your belt?” she asked.

The boy looked at the floor and said he didn’t have it.

“Where is it?” Alice repeated. After pressing the boy to answer, he quietly lifted his head and looked at her and replied, “My baby sister died and I put it in her coffin to take to heaven with her.”

Alice had tears in her eyes as she told me the story. “That belt was probably his most important possession,” she said.

The boy had learned to give his best, unselfishly.

Chuck Norris

B. J.

Y
ou don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can decide how you’re going to live now.

Joan Baez

“Phhhhhh.”
The whistle blew, and everybody started tackling each other. It was football practice, on a cool August evening.

Bam!
I hit somebody. I looked down into the face of one of my best friends, B. J.

“You were just lucky that time, Nate,” he teased.

“Yeah, right! It’s just that I’m good at football,” I joked back.

I had met my friend B. J. when we ended up on the same football team in sixth grade. Although everyone on our team liked B. J., he grew to be someone special to me. When we had to pick partners for things like tackling, it would always be B. J. and me. He was funny and fun— everything was always “Cool!” to him.

B. J. got back up and tackled me. We laughed, and then we heard our coach calling us.

“Come here, guys.” We all went over to him. “At our game tomorrow, I want you to play as hard as you can.”

“Okay,” we said in unison.

“That’s it for tonight. Don’t forget to finish your homework,” our coach hollered as we left the field.

“See you at the game tomorrow,” I screamed to B. J. He was going to his church youth group meeting. B. J. walked away with his dad, who was our assistant coach, as my mom pulled into the parking lot.

“Mom, after the game tomorrow, can B. J. come over?” I asked, hopping into the front seat.

“I don’t know. We’ll see,” she replied.

The next day, I went to the game, pads on, ready to go. We reviewed the plays that we had learned the night before. Then we stretched out. B. J. was late, and I was starting to wonder where he was. It was always easy to spot him right away because he was taller than anyone else on the team. I said to myself,
B. J. would never miss a game
. That was when I realized his dad wasn’t there either. He had never missed a game since he had started coaching us.

Something is wrong
, I thought. Our coach called us over. Now I was really wondering what was going on.

“Guys, we need to win this game today.” Then he stopped talking. Everything was silent. “I’ve got some bad news. B. J. had an accident last night,” he told us.

I shut my eyes and started to cry to myself. I knew it was going to be really bad. My coach kept on talking.

“He was on his way back from his church youth group with a bunch of other kids. B. J. was swinging a nylon rope outside the car window when the rope got caught on the wheel axle. The rope jerked out of his hands, and he must have stuck his head outside the window to see what had happened. The rope whipped up and wrapped around his neck. It strangled him to death. And after the . . . ” My coach’s voice started to drift off. I couldn’t even concentrate on what he was saying anymore. All I could think about was how I had just seen him last night.

All the kids on our team were standing with their helmets in their hands, crying. “Let’s win this game for B. J.,” my coach shouted.

Through the whole game, I kept thinking about B. J. and looking into the sky. I wondered if he could see us playing our hearts out for him. We played our best game ever, and we won.

At our next practice, we took the blue stripe off our helmets and replaced it with a black stripe. We all put the number eighty, B. J.’s jersey number, on the backs of our helmets.

B. J.’s father came back to help coach our games again. He would have his hat on crooked, like he just didn’t care anymore. I felt really sad for him—he never looked happy and I never saw him smile again, even when we won. I know it was extra terrible for both B. J.’s mom and dad because he was their only child.

We wore our helmets with B. J.’s number to our next four games. We won every single game, and we played them for him. We made it to the championships, and there we tied for first place.

I know we couldn’t have done it without B. J. I feel as if he was with us. Sometimes I would look around, expecting at any moment to see him—in his favorite red T-shirt, with that blond buzzed hair sticking up every which way, his face with that great smile on it.

Although B. J.’s death hasn’t made me stop doing the things that I love, like football, in-line skating and snow skiing, I’m not the daredevil I used to be. I stop and think about what I am doing before I do it—not only about the fun I will have, but also about the dangers that could be involved. I used to stick my hand out the car window when my dad or mom was driving, to catch leaves or something. Now I don’t.

I couldn’t go to B. J.’s funeral. It was too hard for me. All of us took it really hard, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. I really miss him.

Nate Barker, age 12

The Perfect Angel

W
hen someone dies, they still live on in you and me, and everyone else who loved them.

Jessica Ann Farley, age 10

When I was seven years old, I met a new little girl who had just moved to my street. Kiki was a year older than I was. She had a brother, Sam, who needed to go to a special school, which is why her family had moved to Boston.

It was the summertime when we met, and the weather was very hot. Kiki and her mother came over to my house to get to know their new neighbors. Once Kiki and I saw each other, we knew that we would become great friends. That day, Kiki and I played outside and laughed together every minute. As the years progressed, Kiki and I became better and closer friends.

There is one day that I will never forget. I was in the fourth grade when this happened. I had noticed that Kiki had been getting a lot of really big bruises everywhere. I will not forget that night when the telephone rang and it was Kiki’s mother. When my mother got off the phone, she looked really upset. My mother and father called me into the dining room. My mother said, “Stacie, Kiki has a bad kind of cancer called leukemia.”

The first words I said were, “Is she going to die, Mom?” My mom said, “I don’t know, Stacie.”

At that moment, I knew that she meant “yes” in a nicer way. I ran up to my room and started crying and crying until I fell asleep.

The next day, I didn’t get to see Kiki at all. When a few days went by, I got a call from Kiki telling me that she was in the hospital. She told me that she had to go in for a bone marrow test with her brother, Sam. If this test matched, she would have a good chance of surviving. Sadly, there was no match.

Because we felt so helpless with the situation, my two sisters and I decided to do something to try to help. We called the Children’s Leukemia Center, and asked for some banners and money jars to use for a bake sale to try to raise funds for the center. We sold lemonade and cookies and made over sixty dollars. It made us feel like we were at least making a small contribution. What we really wanted was for Kiki and the other children to get well.

Months went by, and Kiki was still not getting any better. She had lost all of her hair. It was very hard for me to see her as sick as she was. But I went to see her almost every day.

The day before Kiki died, I was in school and got a message to come to Kiki’s house to say my final good-bye to my best friend. My mother came to the school to drive me to Kiki’s house. She told me that Kiki wanted to see me really badly. In the car, I was crying a lot.

I got to Kiki’s house, and I went up to her room, and everyone left so that we could talk together. We talked about everything, and I think it made Kiki feel better. Kiki seemed so brave and so unselfish, because her biggest concern was for her family. She asked me (and later, we found out, many people who knew them) to be sure to take care of her mom and dad and Sam. My last words were “I love you,” and she said, “I love you, too.”

That night I could not sleep, so I went downstairs. I had prayed every night that Kiki would get better and not die. My wishes and my praying did not help because Kiki died on that Thursday in January. It was six in the morning when my mom came down and said to me, “Stacie, she is gone.” I cried more than I ever had in my life. I could not believe that my best friend was gone. Days later, I went to Kiki’s funeral and cried even more.

One year passed, and we were having an anniversary memorial service. I have a pretty good voice, so Kiki’s mother asked me if I would sing a song from
The Lion King
at the service. I said yes and that I would sing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” by Elton John.

I sang it, and everyone thought it was really good. I felt that when I sang that song, Kiki was singing it with me. The first movie Kiki and I saw together was
The Lion King
. That was our favorite movie. When I went to say my final good-bye to her, I was wearing my
Lion King
sweatshirt.

Two years have passed, and I still remember Kiki. I can remember very special things about Kiki: her warmth, her big heart, and her cute laugh and smile.

I sing a lot at talent shows and plays, and every time I sing, I know that Kiki is with me. I will never, ever forget Kiki because she was so special to me. I feel that she watches over me and that she is my guardian angel. I would call her the Perfect Angel, wouldn’t you?

Stacie Christina Smith, age 12

[EDITORS’ NOTE:
For support in dealing with the illness or loss of a loved one due to an illness, call Kids Konnected at 800-899-2866.
]

Someone to Hold Onto

T
he friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing—and face with us the reality of our powerlessness—that is the friend who really cares.

Henri Nouwen

Strange that I can still remember the doorbell ringing late that afternoon. I was twelve years old, and the everyday sound of that two-tone chime interrupted the gray February day.

Mom wiped her hands on the bleached dish-towel, throwing it over her shoulder as she left the kitchen. I abandoned my math homework somewhere in the “hundreds” column and raced my younger brothers to the door. We came to the required halt just as Mom entered the living room.

Waiting by our heavy front door, I could feel the wet Missouri cold pressing in from outside. I was tall enough to see through the top half where the window was. Standing on our red cement porch, just one pane of glass away, was Barb Murphy—the teenager I most admired in the whole neighborhood and in the entire world!

But Barb’s usually vibrant cheeks were drained, her perfect skin pulled tightly across her strong jawline. She kept her lapis blue eyes on my mom, who opened the door enough to greet her, but not enough to let the dog out.

There were whispered words, quick, jerking glances toward my brothers and me, and then Barb was spelling a word. It didn’t sound like any word I knew. Bits and pieces of my mother’s conversation with Barb kept distracting me, jumbling the letters. I struggled to make sense of that word. S-u-i-c-i- . . .

“Oh no, dear, not Bruce Garrett. When? Where did they find him?” And finally, the part I was straining to hear: “How did he do it?”

The mysterious letters became a black-hearted word that hit my stomach hard. I knew this word
suicide,
after all. Mr. Garrett, Cindy Garrett’s father, was dead. He had killed himself.

Cindy and I had played together every possible day of every summer, for all the years we had both lived in the neighborhood—since kindergarten. Mr. Garrett had built a playhouse for us, and when he made wooden stilts for Cindy, he made a second pair for me. When we were older, he bought real canvas bases for our neighborhood softball games. He drew a chart and showed us how to keep score, with all nine innings and each person’s name listed in his strong, black printing.

I think that Mr. Garrett really wanted to be accepted by us kids. If he drove up during one of our dodgeball games in the street, he would turn his radio to a rock ’n’ roll song, as loud as it would go, and wave at us as we stood by the curb. There’d be a dozen high-pitched voices overlapping one another, chorusing back, “Hi, Mr. Garrett!” as he drove by.

I tried to picture his tan face, straight nose and the shiny black hair that made him look like an Indian—without seeing the bloody mess that a bullet had made. I couldn’t do it, so I tried to stop seeing him at all.

My mom turned to me. “Annie, get your shoes and coat on, and go up there.”

What could my mom possibly mean? I stared at Barb, wondering if she would translate for me.

Mom’s voice came again. “Go stay with Cindy, and ask Mrs. Garrett if there is anything I can do. Tell her we are praying. . . .”

Finally hearing Mom’s words, I obeyed. Under my brothers’ silent stares, I got ready fast enough to catch up with Barb as she was leaving our house. But when we reached the sidewalk, she turned the other way, toward our next-door neighbors’.

“I have to tell the Parkers,” Barb told me. It sounded like she was talking to herself. She pulled a pair of knitted gloves from the pocket of her camel-hair coat and simply walked away.

Left with no alternatives that I could think of, I headed toward the Garretts’ house. I don’t remember walking up the street. I only remember following the sidewalk to the white police car and turning in there.

I went up the dark green steps to Cindy’s screened porch door and opened it as I had hundreds of times before. I stepped onto the rug made of scratchy straw squares, all woven together. I wanted my walk across that rug to the front door to last forever so I would never have to arrive within arm’s reach of the doorbell.

But the full-length glass of the Garretts’ storm door somehow came to meet me. I looked away to avoid my reflection. With the thumb of my left mitten, I punched at the doorbell twice before it actually rang. When it did, my stomach felt like Alka-Seltzer dropped into a glass of water.

What will I say to Cindy? Why am I here, anyway? What am I supposed to do?

I hadn’t thought to ask my mom about any of this. For a moment, my bewilderment outweighed my panic. I heard slow footsteps on the other side of the white colonial door. Terrified, I watched the brass doorknob turn and tried to remember how I normally greeted my best friend.

Struggling to see through my own reflection in the glass, I didn’t even recognize her at first. In the widening space inside stood not Cindy, but Mrs. Garrett. She pushed open the storm door with a force that belied her small frame. Her eyes were wild and red, and there was a desperate sagging to her face, with lines I had never seen.

“Annie!” she cried, as she grabbed me and clutched me to her bony, collapsing chest. It was the first time that I realized Mrs. Garrett was not much bigger than I was. I let her surround me with her shaking arms, until her sobs finally quieted. She held onto me for what seemed a long time.

I didn’t know what to say or do next, but I knew this woman’s life was broken apart, shattered now like the windshield of Mr. Garrett’s blue station wagon. I was just twelve years old, but I was someone to hold onto.

During the long months that followed, I would be with them often. I learned to spend more time greeting Mrs. Garrett and to use a softer voice. I remembered to have tissues on the floor next to every board game Cindy and I played, and I knew that if my dad walked into the room, Cindy would cry harder.

More than a year later, I explained to the librarian why Cindy had walked out in tears, leaving her application for a new library card unfinished at the section that said “Father’s Occupation.”

Knowing how to be with a family in pain never became easy. But from those first moments in Mrs. Garrett’s arms, I learned that my awkwardness didn’t matter. I was there, and that’s what counted.

Ann McCoole Rigby