just a story about some one i knew a long time ago.

This a story I have been thinking about telling for a long time now, i have tried to pare it down as much as possible, I probly should have had scott help me,

This story is as true as they come.



Kneeling in a fifty five ford 3/4 ton truck he had been four days on the road with his dad and his little sister. They had just dropped her off and was now heading home. He looked across the freeway in Anaheim California and for the first time in his life made a wish, he had never made a wish for himself before....... He felt guilty and a little anxiously sick while doing it......



He was eight years old,and he was different....

Some people are different because, there is something different about them,

Other's become different because circumstances, as they often do, create an adaptation which seems strange to others around them.

When his first sister was born, she had something wrong with her hands and feet. The toes and fingers were not completely formed. This seemingly small deformation became the focus of his families life. She required surgery to separate the digits and to try to form usable fingers and toes. This took lengthy stays in the hospital and required both parents to work so that they could pay for these treatments.

His mom had changed..... she felt guilty as parents in those situations often do, this was the late nineteen fifty's. most people knew little about developing fetuses.
there were no sonograms, genetic testing and very few obstetricians. Most doctors were just M.D.'s working in hospitals and family practice offices. They listened and poked and
came-a-runnin' when the time was come.

So no one could tell mom definitively what had happened during development of this child to cause this problem....So mom blamed herself. She was angry and demanding and a little boy became responsible to help her. and when she went to work......He did even more. He was brighter and stronger than most kids years older, he taught himself to read while sitting next to his sisters crib listening to her breath he learned by observation how to position her in the crib so that she would more easily breath and when she opened her eye's he was there and then he would read aloud.
He didn't know all the words so he filled in what he didn't know from his imagination and asked mom or dad what the words were when they got home.... He was four then.

In the years between that day and this he had read stories to his little sister and in that time another sister was born, sassy and bright and doing all she could to help, she listened to the stories too.

They read stories about knights and dragons, peter pan and the pirates, the red badge of courage, Rikki tikki tavi, and sleeping beauty. Cousins who lived nearby would come and sit on the floor as the stories were told. On Sunday when Disney came on the T.V. one cousin might say to the other as the program ended.....That his stories were better.

The health of his sister improved over the years and he kept on as her guardian angel.

Starting school is tough, but when you are physically different, it can be hell. Whatever happened he was there to cushion the blow and shield her. This cost him in baseball and kickball games and the social ties that make life easier for a boy..

But he knew his job and stuck to it. Like a solder, which is what he became as a man, his little sister's personal army. There were a few little boys, who had a cruel edge that payed the price for crossing the line. He learned how to handle a bully long before he helped to crush Saddam Hussein's war machine. Sometimes great tools are formed in small forges.

His dad told him one Saturday morning that he would go with him on a trip, more surgery for his little sister.
To Shriner's hospital in southern California.

He thought about Sunday night television and Disneyland and was excited to be in the same area that this place of wishes and dreams was. But he knew his job and would stick to it. since he was four he would travel with his Dad, as the little sister was taken to different hospitals in the western united states for each new surgery to give her a better chance at a normal life.

They stayed at the homes of relatives and ate at diners and the trip was full of reading stories and looking out the window while his sister slept with her head in his lap.

After three days they were there, and this time she was staying. and they were going home the next day. the boy gave the nurse the book he had been reading her...Aesop's fables.... he told her to read it to her if she cried. the nurse blinked quickly once or twice, this little boy had talked to her as if he was the girls father. and commented to him on how big his hands were as she took the book from him,.... "had work to do" he said.... It was a phrase he had heard his father and grand father say when they had received a smiler compliment.

they spent the night at a cousins house that he had never met. out of curiosity he had asked them. "where was Disneyland in this big state...." the reply... "twelve mile down the road...just past the big orange fields"..." you guys gonna go?" ..."ain't got time" his dad said. "got to be back to work on Monday...."


the next day they lit out right after breakfast.. dad had figured how far they had to get by lunch. and they pulled on the freeway, wound er' up to 55 miles an hour and began to chew miles.....
his son opened the book in his lap and didn't look at it but instead out the window....he saw him lay the book down without turning the page down. and kneel up on the seat as high as he could go. when the orange fields gave way to the biggest parking lot he had ever seen. as he glanced at his son, and something happened to him......

it was like a young lifetime of selfless service, flashed through his mind...........

"hell" he thought, "it was just a damn job".........

and pulled off the the only concrete road he had ever driven on.....

"Son?" he asked. "what do they have at this Disney place? and i ain't ridin' no tilty whirl....."

The boy who hadn't often smiled in six years didn't stop for the next twelve hours