Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul (19 page)

Dreams of the Children

Everyone is good enough
Everyone is right
Everyone deserves a home
And a warm bed at night

Everybody needs a friend
Everyone needs their space
All people are created equal
So why is it the human
race?

Perhaps our only problem
Is that some refuse to see
Not everyone else is the trouble
The trouble is you and me

So if we work together
As a team, me and you
Maybe we can rebuild our world
And make our dreams come true.

Jody Suzanne Waitzman, age 13

Batgirl

T
oday, no one questions whether women are equal to men in ability and intelligence.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower

“So what, Ray? So what if I’m not a boy? I can hit better than everybody, except maybe Tommy—and maybe you on a good day. And I’m faster than all of you put together.”

“You can still play with the girls at recess,” he said.

I stared him down, eye to eye, both of us sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of my house. The cement felt warm. Crabgrass poked through and scratched my thigh.

I won the stare-down.

Ray looked down at the Big Chief tablet on my lap.

“And you sure can’t win that contest, Dandi,” he mumbled. “I don’t know why you’re even entering.”

A blue-lined page from his tablet stuck to his knobby knee. He pushed a shock of brown hair, straight as harvest wheat, out of his eyes. Ray’s mom cut both of our hair. I shoved mine out of my face. Then I pulled out the coupon I’d torn from the
Kansas City Star
sports page.

“I’m entering,” I said, “and I’m winning.”

Ray jerked the coupon out of my hand and pointed his finger at the print.

“See!” he said triumphantly. “It says right here: 1959
batboy contest.
Write in seventy-five words or less why you want to be batboy for the KC Athletics pro baseball team. Not bat
girl
.” He cackled as if a batgirl was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“Well, it’s not fair!” I said, half to Ray, half to myself.

I was tired of not getting to do stuff just because I was a girl. Ray played Little League. I could knock him down with a line drive, hitting from my Stan Musiel batting stance. But our small Missouri town didn’t have a girls’ baseball team.

I was ten, the age when boys stopped caring that you were the only one who could hit an inside-the-park homer or the only one who knew the infield fly rule. They simply wouldn’t let you play because you were a girl.

My sister, Maureen, slammed the screen door.

“What’s going on out here?” she asked.

Maureen, who was my older sister, couldn’t tell a baseball from a football if it hit her in the face.

“Nothing,” I answered. I tucked the coupon in my tablet.

“We’re . . . umm . . . drawing,” I lied.

Ray looked confused. “Drawing? I thought we were . . . ”

I nudged him into silence.

Maureen tried giving me one of our mother’s suspicious looks. The attempt made her look more like Bruno, our hound dog, when he had to go outside.

Ray and I sat in the sun and set our pencils scratching. At the end of an hour, I had fourteen paper wads to show.

“I’m done,” Ray announced.

“Read it,” I demanded.

I crossed my fingers and hoped it would be awful. Ray swatted at a horsefly, then held up his paper and read aloud. “I want to be a batboy for the Kansas City A’s because I really, really, really like baseball and I really, really, really like Kansas City and the Athletics.”

He looked wide-eyed at me. “What do you think, Dandi?”

I hadn’t hoped it would be
that
awful.

“Why so many
reallys?
” I asked.

He looked wounded. “I need the words! What do you know, anyway? You can’t even enter the contest.”

Ray left me standing alone on the sidewalk. I took in the sweet scent of the cornfields across the road and thought about what I might write.

The words began to flow as I put pen to paper:

My whole life people have told me that I can’t. My sister has said that I can’t sing. My teacher has said that I can’t spell. Mom has said that I can’t be a professional baseball player. My best friend has said that I can’t win this contest. I’m entering this contest to prove them wrong. I want to be your next Kansas City A’s batboy.

I signed it “Dan Daley.” My dad always called me “Dan,” short for Dandi. I addressed the envelope and mailed my entry.

As the months passed, filled with sandlot baseball, I played whenever I could force my way into a game. Then late one autumn afternoon, there was a knock at our door. When I opened the door, I was surprised to find two men in suits, carrying briefcases. Surely they were from out of town.

“Hello, little girl,” the shorter man said. “We’d like to speak to your brother.”

“Don’t have a brother,” I said.

The taller man wrinkled his forehead and popped open his briefcase. He took out a handful of papers. Both men studied them while I stood in the doorway, guarding my brotherless home.

“Is this 508 Samuel Street?” asked the shorter one.

“I guess,” I answered.

Nobody used house numbers in our neighborhood. There were only two houses on our road.

“Isn’t this the home of Dan Daley?”

A light went on in my head. Then I got it.

“Mom!”
I screamed, without taking my eyes off the strangers. “Come here! Hurry!” Sure enough, I had won the batboy contest. My words had done the trick!

I let Mom explain about my not having a brother. I confessed I’d entered as “Dan.” Maureen and Bruno started to congratulate me—but not the strangers.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, a familiar feeling of dread creeping up my spine.

“Well,” said the taller one, “you’re not a boy.”

“Well, duh,” I answered.

“Contest rules clearly state ‘a boy aged eight to twelve,’ ” said the shorter one.

“But I won!” I protested.

“Little girl,” he said, “this was not a batgirl contest.”

The men left, taking with them my dream of being a Kansas City A’s batboy. Hoping to make up for it, they sent us season tickets, team jackets, autographed baseballs, hats and a hardwood bat. I never did wear that hat. I became a St. Louis Cardinals fan instead. But I did grab that bat the day it came. I marched to our school playground where Ray, Tommy and the guys were in the middle of a pickup game.

“I’m batting,” I said, one-arming Ray away from the plate.

The guys groaned, but Ray seemed to know something more was at stake. He nodded to the pitcher. I took the first pitch, high and outside, just the way I liked it. Before the crack of the bat, I knew I’d send that ball over the fence for a home run. I turned my back before the ball hit the street, finally bouncing into a ditch.

Gently, I released my Kansas City Athletics bat and heard it bounce in the dirt. I proudly walked the bases to home plate, leaving that bat where it had fallen.

“Let the batboy get it.”

Dandi Dailey Mackall

G-o-o-o-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l !

L
augh and learn, because we all make mistakes.

Weston Dunlap, age 8

Running as fast as my small legs could carry me, I concentrated on the black-and-white object spinning ahead, and realized that this was my chance. This was my dream come true. I had a jump on the others, and it was all up to me! I looked behind me and saw the yellow jerseys and green shorts of my teammates, the National Auto Glass Dinosaurs. They looked like a swarm of bees, all headed toward the soccer ball. I saw the faces of my opponents and could tell that some of them were running really hard. They wanted the ball, but it was mine,
all mine!

I ran up to the ball and gave it a tremendous, four-year-old kick. It scooted farther down the field, and again I sprinted after it. The other players gained on me, but I was nearing the goal. The confused look on the goalie’s face told me that he wasn’t ready to make a save. The rooting section on the sideline was chanting, “Kick it! Kick it! Kick the ball!”

I wound up and toed the ball as hard as a four-year-old ever could. It bounced into the net, past the scrambling goalie. I went wild! I had just scored my first real goal!

I ran back to my teammates. Some were cheering and celebrating with me, but most of them had their arms crossed, with scowls on their faces and annoyed looks in their eyes.
They
wanted to score that goal, but
I
had! Ha! Ha!! I looked to my mom and dad on the sideline. They were laughing with some other parents. This is just too cool! I’d scored my first ever goal—
for the other team!

Heather Thomsen, age 13

With Every Footstep

Y
ou have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence. . . .

Ps. 16:11

I was not only a little surprised, but worried to find myself in the Vault Finals at the 1996 Olympic Games when Kerri Strug was forced to pull out as a result of an ankle injury. I had done well during the team competition, but had just missed qualifying for the Vault Finals competition. When my coach, Steve, and I were notified that I’d become eligible to compete in this event, I wasn’t feeling prepared to be Kerri’s replacement.

My first reaction was,
How can I?
Due to an extremely sore wrist, I had not been able to work a second vault. Vault Finals require that the gymnast compete on two vaults from two different vault families. This was a moment when all of my gymnastics experience had to be there to support me. Steve encouraged me to give it a try.

Once I recovered from the initial shock, I knew that I didn’t want to give up the opportunity to compete in another event of the 1996 Olympics. I fully intended to give it my best shot from that moment forward. With a positive attitude, and with support from Steve and my parents, I gave it everything I had during my workouts, and they went great. I didn’t miss a single vault—even while warming up for the actual competition. I focused on how great an opportunity it was to be given the chance to compete.

However, my positive attitude and joy quickly turned to tears of embarrassment and discouragement. When the time came to compete, I sprinted hard down the runway, but as I approached the springboard, I knew that my steps were off. I was not coming onto the vault horse at the right place! In an instant, it was all over. I had missed placing one of my hands down on the horse, which resulted in my performing an outrageous flip in the air and landing on my seat right in front of literally hundreds of thousands of people! I felt the hot flush of embarrassment swimming from my stomach straight up to my bright red face.

As soon as the event was over, I headed up to the USA gymnastics suite, where I knew my parents would be waiting for me. My tears were flowing pretty freely, so my parents took me aside so that we could have a little privacy. I try always to place my trust in God to direct my path. I never pray to win, but I always ask God to help me do my best. I had been so full of joy and confidence going into the competition. What had happened?

Mom asked me if I remembered the poem
Footprints
that hung on the wall of my room. She reminded me that God had always been walking with me. Never had he abandoned me. Maybe it was time for me to allow God to
carry
me. Rather than be worried about once again failing, I could remember that I didn’t have to do this all by myself. All I needed to remember was that God is always by my side. Instead of dreading Beam Finals the next day, I needed to be grateful for the opportunity to express the talent that God had given me, and not to be concerned about winning or losing.

The next evening, I was calm and at peace while I waited for my turn to compete. When I mounted the beam, I heard a man yell at someone in the crowd, “Turn your [camera] flash off!” I consciously thought,
How sweet of him to be concerned about my welfare.
A camera flash can cause an accident that could potentially end a career, or worse. It struck me that I had never before heard what was going on around me when I was competing. I was usually so tremendously focused, I had blocked out everything else. But that night’s competition was different from any other. I felt an emotional connection with the audience whose love of gymnastics, and the athletes who represented the sport, seemed to completely surround me. At that moment, I was able to let in all the joy of the evening, of being in the Olympic Games, and of the sport of gymnastics.

I took a few calming breaths and thanked God for being with me, and for the talent that he has given me. And then, I
went for it!

I aced my routine! I felt so great when my feet hit the mat. I honestly had no idea as to whether or not I would win a medal. But at that moment, medals truly did not matter. I had accomplished something far greater than a world record in gymnastics. I had felt the comfort and strength of God’s presence with every footstep of the routine.

I took home an Olympic Gold Medal to remind me of that night. But the night was golden in more ways than one. I will always treasure in my heart what it is like to experience God’s presence.

Shannon Miller