Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Too Busy For Fren

One day a teacher asked her students to list the
names of the
other students in the room on two sheets of paper,
leaving a space
between each name.

Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they
could say about each of their classmates and write
it down.

It took the remainder of the class period to finish
their assignment, and as the students left the
room, each one handed in the papers.

That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of
each student
on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what
everyone else had
said about that individual.

On Monday she gave each student his or her list.

Before long, the entire class was smiling.

"Really?" she heard whispered. "I never knew that I
meant anything to anyone!" and, "I didn't know
others liked me so much." were most of the
comments.

No one ever mentioned those papers in class again.
She never knew if they discussed them after class
with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise
had accomplished its purpose.

The students were happy with themselves and one
another. That group of students moved on. Several
years later, one of the students was killed in
Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of
that special student.

She had never seen a serviceman in a military
coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature.
The church was packed with his friends.

One by one those who loved him took a last walk
by the coffin.

The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.


As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted
as pallbearer came up to her.


"Were you Mark's math teacher?" he asked. She
nodded: "yes."
Then he said: "Mark talked about you a lot."


After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates
went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and
father were there, obviously waiting to speak with
his teacher.


"We want to show you something," his father said,
taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this
on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might
recognize it."


Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn
pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been
taped, folded and refolded many times.

The teacher knew without looking that the papers
were the ones on which she had listed all the good
things each of Mark's classmates had said about
him.

"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother
said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it."


All of Mark's former classmates started to gather
around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and
said, "I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of
my desk at home."

Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in
our wedding album."

"I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary."

Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her
purse and showed her frazzled list to the group. "I
carry this with me at all times, " Vicki said and
without batting an eyelash, she continued: "I think
we all saved our lists."

That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried.
She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would
never see him again.


The density of people in society is so thick that we
forget that life will end one day. And we don't know
when that one day will be.

So please, tell the people you love and care for,
that they are
special and important.


Tell them, before it is too late...

Labels: stories

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tEdDi @ |10:06 pm|