❤❀☮☪✞Teenage Odyssey✡☯☮❀❤

Two Choices:

What would you do?….you make the

choice.

Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one.

Read it anyway.

My question is: Would you have

made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a

school that serves children with

learning disabilities, the father of

one of the students delivered a

speech that would never be

forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its

Dedicated staff, he offered a

question:

‘When not interfered with by

outside influences, everything

nature does, is done with

perfection..

Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn

things as other children do. He

cannot understand things as other

children do.

Where is the natural order of

things in my son?’

The audience was stilled by the

query.

The father continued.. ‘I believe

that when a child like Shay, who

was mentally and physically

disabled comes into the world, an

opportunity to realize true

human nature presents itself, and

it comes in the way other people

treat that child.’

Then he told the following story:

Shay and I had walked past a park

where some boys Shay knew were

playing baseball.

Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let

me play?’

I knew that most of the boys would

not want someone like Shay on

their team, but as a fatherI also

understood that if my son were

allowed to play, it would give

him a much-needed sense of

belonging and some confidence to

be accepted by others in spite of his

handicaps.

I approached one of the boys on the

field and asked (not expecting much)

if Shay could play.

The boy looked around for

guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by

six runs and the game is in the

eighth inning. I guess he can be on

our team and we’ll try to put him in

to bat in the ninth inning.’

Shay struggled over to the team’s

bench and, with a broad smile, put

on a team shirt. I watched with a

small tear in my eye and warmth in

my heart. The boys saw my joy at

my son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning,

Shay’s team scored a few runs but

was still behind by three.

In the top of the ninth inning, Shay

put on a glove and played in the

right field. Even though no hits

came his way, he was obviously

ecstatic just to be in the game

and on the field, grinning from ear

to ear as I waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning,

Shay’s team scored again.

Now, with two outs and the bases

loaded, the potential winning run

was on base and Shay was

scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay

bat and give away their chance to

win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the

bat. Everyone knew that a hit was

all but impossible because Shay

didn’t even know how to hold the

bat properly, much less connect

with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the

Plate, the pitcher, recognizing that

the other team was putting winning

aside for this moment in Shay’s life,

moved in a few steps to lob the ball

in softly so Shay could at least

make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay

swung clumsily and missed.

The pitcher again took a few steps

forward to toss the ball softly

towards Shay.

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at

the ball and hit a slow ground ball

right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over.

The pitcher picked up the soft

grounder and could have easily

thrown the ball to the first

baseman.

Shay would have been out and that

would have been the end of the

game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball

right over the first baseman’s head,

out of reach of all team mates.

Everyone from the stands and both

teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to

first! Run to first!’

Never in his life had Shay ever run

that far, but he made it to first base.

He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second,

run to second!’

Catching his breath, Shay

awkwardly ran towards second,

gleaming and struggling to

make it to the base.

By the time Shay rounded towards

second base, the right fielder had

the ball . The smallest guy on their

team who now had his first chance

to be the hero for his team.

He could have thrown the ball to

the second-baseman for the tag, but

he understood the pitcher’s

intentions so he, too, intentionally

threw the ball high and far

over the third-baseman’s head.

Shay ran toward third base

deliriously as the runners

ahead of him circled the bases

toward home.

All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay,

Shay, all the Way Shay’

Shay reached third base because

the opposing shortstop ran to help

him by turning him in the direction

of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to

third! Shay, run to third!’

As Shay rounded third, the boys

from both teams, and the

spectators, were on their feet

screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run

home!’

Shay ran to home, stepped on the

plate, and was cheered as the hero

who hit the grand slam and won

the game for his team

‘That day’, said the father softly

with tears now rolling down his

face, ‘the boys from both teams

helped bring a piece of true love

and humanity into this world’.

Shay didn’t make it to another

summer.

He died that winter, having

never forgotten being the hero and

making me so happy, and coming

home and seeing his Mother

tearfully embrace her little hero

of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOT NOTE

TO THIS STORY:

We all send thousands of jokes

through the e-mail without a

second thought, but when it comes

to sending messages about life

choices, people hesitate.

The crude, vulgar, and often

obscene pass freely through

cyberspace, but public discussion

about decency is too often

suppressed in our schools and

workplaces.

If you’re thinking about forwarding

this message, chances are that

you’re probably sorting out the

people in your address book who

aren’t the ‘appropriate’ ones to

receive this type of message

Well, the person who sent you this

believes that we all can make a

difference.

We all have thousands of

opportunities every single

day to help realize the ‘natural

order of things.’

So many seemingly trivial

interactions between two

people present us with a choice:

Do we pass along a little spark of

love and humanity

or do we pass up those

opportunities and leave the

world a little bit colder in the

process?

A wise man once said every society

is judged by how it treats it’s least

fortunate amongst them.

You now have two choices:

1. Delete

2. Forward

May your day, be a Shay

Day

“Thats Six-Hundred-Thousand lives scared, hungry, ill & unsheltered & unprotected. They’ve gone from being in a good enough position to being in position at all, with society straining to pay attention to them. Imagine if you’d lost your house, the majority of your belongings; that computer you so cherish your time with, your comfortable bed, your TV, your fridge…everything lost, leaving only with a few things that you can carry with you, as you travel across dirty, flooded lands, with thousands of other people in the same, desperate position, with the fear that desperation may cause these very people to do something to you. Your children are crying, scared, & hungry; you’re hungry. Its been miles since you started walking, or days since you’ve been stranded on your own or someone else’s roof. The mosquitoes are getting under your skin, literally it feels. You don’t feel well yourself. & you think, ‘Where is the world? Where are my fellow countrymen? They know i’m in such a horrible state, but i see no relief of any kind, material or emotional’. Then you either wonder where’s God, or God is your only friend left. You become desperate yourself, envying those you managed to carry off more material possessions than you, thinking of stealing. Or maybe, your thinking why haven’t your relatives called; why haven’t they visited to ask you to move out of that God forsaken shelter & into their home…we are family after all?

This is, at best, what those SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND are going through, maybe even worse that i fail to depict for you. They are lacking in basic resources of all sorts, from shelter to medicine to clothes, & of course, the most basic need of all, food; they are getting ill because of thirst, they drink the water from the floods, & contract all sorts of preventable diseases. Now is NOT the time to criticise governments or holidaying politicians, now is the time for a country to prove its worth to its predecessors watching from the heavens, NOW is the time for Humanity to prove their worth to the Lord watching from above, prove that we can come together, all walks of life, the believing & non believing, the whites,blacks,Asians,Muslims,Christians,Jews,Hindus,Buddhists; that we understand the value of humanity, the value of each other.

I’m 16, & my family is not affected by the floods, but we’re in a tolerable & intolerable financial position ourselves, but i still want to try for others; i want to ask you, my fellow beings, to help our brothers & sisters, OUR children, survive this tragedy, & take it as an opportunity you’ve always wanted, that opportunity to be someone. I want to ask you to give them hope, to give me hope, that there are good people in the world, people who understand the meaning of another beyond the aspect of lustful teenage vampire love. http://wfp.org http://unicef.org

AMERICAN CITIZENS CAN TEXT THE WORD ‘SWAT’ TO 50555 TO MAKE A $10 DONATION TO THE FLOOD VICTIMS. WHEN PROMPTED,REPLY WITH ‘YES’ TO CONFIRM YOUR DONATION