Too Busy For A Friend

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 or 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 Viet Nam 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 pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and 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 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. One way to accomplish this is to pass this message on. If you do not click on the link below you will have, once again, passed up the wonderful opportunity to do something nice and beautiful. If you've received this, it is because someone cares for you and it means there is probably at least someone for whom you care.

If you're "too busy" to take a second or two right now to pass this message on, would this be the VERY first time you didn't do that little thing that would make a difference in your relationships? The more people that you send this to, the better you'll be at reaching out to those you care about. Remember, you reap what you sow. What you put into the lives of others comes back into your own.

By the way, guilt is what you feel when you know you should have done something you didn’t do, or did something you shouldn’t have done. Love is what you feel when you care about someone else, and when you receive that same sort of care from someone. This message, in this format, is easily sent, easily received, and a wonderful way to avoid guilt.

Click here to share this page

From time to time eMails are shared which contain photographs and/or other material. These messages tend to take a lot of bandwidth ~ send and receive time for these messages tends to be excessive. If you have such a message you'd like to share, and the message is not religion specific, does not relate to a specific political party, person, or issue, is without profanity and does not demean, perhaps it is a candidate for inclusion in 'All Share'. Contact MiscelPage to have your Bandwidth-Saving eMail Message considered for inclusion here. Content acceptability and longevity is at the sole discretion of Miscelpage, which accepts all responsibility for format and presentability and no responsibility for authentic reproduction of the original eMail message.

Each shared item is ascribed to the submittor (not necessarily the author) and the date submitted. If you know the author, credit is given.

MiscelPage Design Content is Proprietary