Brighten Your Day

One day in Elementary school a couple of girls were teasing me. A young boy walked up to them and poliety asked them to stop, and they all walked away. The boy and girl became good friends. One day they were playing together in the schoolyard when a small dog walked into the school grounds. The boy checked the collar. "Misty" is what it read. He helped to get it out of the gate so it wouldn't get takenway. The very next day my mother got a call from my grandpa telling her that my grandma had fallen. When we got to the hospital, my grandmother told me that a dog saved her by getting Grandpa's attention by barking. When my grandma finally got back from the hospital I found that it was Misty who had saved my grandmother. The next day at school we found out that the boy had died in a car accident. At his funeral I met one of his cousins who became a good friend of mine. When we were leaving the funeral the boy asked me for my number. It took a minute to give it to him.

On our way home we passed a horrible accident where a tree had fallen on top of a car. The police who helped us through told us that the accident had happened only 5 minutes earlier, the same time as how long it ook to give the boy my number. One year later I was in middle school, and I met a girl who told me her mother had passed away in a tragic tree accident, so they had moved out to where we lived. The girl and me also became good friends. One night it highschool we were having a sleepover when a tornado struck the area. I had never been in a tornado before, but the girl had, and she helped me survive. When I turned 25, the boy I met at the funeral and I got married. Now we have 3 beautiful children. And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that first boy who took one moment to stop bullying. My kids wouldn't be here either, and that girl wouldn't have been my best friend, or my maid of honor. The moral of my story is:take one moment to show a little bit of kindness, you never know how much it could do.

Written in loving memory of Steven Smithfield