When you’re smilin’

When you’re smilin’

You cannot buy happiness, but you can buy smiles.

Two smile stories… When I taught US History years ago, my students were almost exclusively juniors. I liked that age group. They’re a lot more mature than underclassmen but not cocky like a lot of seniors. At the beginning of each year, I introduced the course and gave my students advice on how they could improve their college application resumes. I recommended they put in two solid years volunteering for a single nonprofit organization. Two years will show a sincere commitment instead of hopping each summer from one worthy cause to another. And I encouraged them to keep volunteering in college and beyond.

I shared with them my volunteering experiences as an adult. Things like coaching youth sports teams, peer counseling at church, etc. Then I added that I had an advantage over them. As an adult, I had a checkbook, and I could make donations to service and charitable organizations working to make lives better for those less fortunate.

To illustrate this point, I would show them brochure images from an organization that I support… Operation Smile. It was a steady stream of children horribly disfigured at birth. Those children were born with cleft palates, and in some rural villages overseas, those children were at best teased mercilessly or at worst ostracized by other villagers. The disfigured mouths and noses at times caused life threatening medical conditions. I followed those heartbreaking images with photos of the same children with huge smiles after receiving corrective surgery from the Operation Smile team of volunteer doctors, nurses, and support staff. Cost: $240.

Then I would make my pitch. If every student in each of my classes saved the money they would have spent on a single “foo-foo” drink at their local coffee store just once each month… each class could pay for a cleft palate operation at the end of the first semester. I let that thought sit there momentarily before moving on to my lesson plan.

A year or two after I started pitching my spiel about volunteerism and foreign children who needed smiles, near the end of the second semester, one of my students approached me. He told me that he had obtained a sellers permit so he could purchase items online then resell them for a small profit. It was a good way to make some walking around money. This year, after hearing my pitch about volunteering, he had set aside some money from his online sales. He handed me $240 and said he would like to pay for an operation to give a child a smile.

Wow! I was stunned. Such a giving heart… all I could do is thank him and smile.

The story does not end there…

The next year, just before Christmas, in my smallest class… 10 juniors… a student raised her hand and told me the class had something for me. Now, the families with kids at this school were very generous with teacher gifts especially around the holidays. I expected maybe a nice gift card… probably redeemable at a local coffee store.

Nope. Another one of my kids walked to the front of the classroom and handed me $240 in cash. Double wow! It was humbling to know that I had nudged these students to give a gift that would change a life. I wrote a check for the donation and put “From US History – 2nd Period” in the memo line and snapped a photo of the check before mailing it to Operation Smile. I used my photo of the check that acknowledged my 2nd period students’ selfless gift destined to create a smile where it was needed most as the screensaver on my classroom computer for the rest of the year.

Be a friend

Be a friend

If you feel like you don’t have any friends, you’re not looking hard enough. They are there if you look for them.

I’m very disappointed. It looks like no reunion for the Class of ’71 in 2021. This is the big one… our 50th reunion. Oh, well. I had paid dues to one of those online services that try to connect high school alums. The service was largely just a nuisance. I did not renew my subscription when it expired.

Before things started shutting down in 2020 due to COVID, I was planning to go to my alma mater’s October 2020 homecoming football game. That would be the 50th anniversary of the Class of 71’s homecoming weekend when we were seniors. However, the 2020 football season was cancelled.

Sadly, there just didn’t seem to be enough interest in 2021 for a 50th reunion. I would have really liked seeing my high school classmates… most likely for the last time… but that’s not what this story is about.

I played football all four years in high school. The fall semester was devoted to playing and the spring semester set aside for training. Players were required to participate in spring training until the final semester of their junior year. During your senior year, if you were not playing another sport, you were assigned to attend regular PE classes during that final spring semester. As you can imagine, it was difficult to take PE or any other classes seriously when you were just months away from graduation. In those days, students were required to take four years of PE. So, as a second semester senior, I was put out to pasture… in a manner of speaking… and assigned to a regular PE class with non-athletes.

As luck would have it, my PE teacher was the head football coach. He directed me to organize the class into six teams to play basketball on the school’s outdoor asphalt courts as well as set up a daily game schedule. I drafted a schedule with pencil and paper. Old school. Remember, Steve Jobs was a high school junior and Bill Gates was a sophomore in spring 1971. I devised a matrix that had teams playing a different opponent every day. Rinse and repeat the following week. Then, the coach did me a huge favor; I still don’t know today whether the favor was by chance or design. He assigned a student named Alan to my team. Alan was a special needs kid. He had great difficulty speaking and he was not very coordinated. The coach made it very clear… Alan was my responsibility.

I remember one hot spring afternoon. All six teams were playing outside. The heat was brutal. Alan would just follow me up and down the court. He knew the ball was supposed to go through the hoop, but he lacked the skill to position himself to take a shot. I turned toward Alan in the middle of the game and guided him to a spot virtually underneath our basket and told him to wait. The game was going on at the other end of the court, so I ran down to our opponents’ basket and joined my teammates. With Alan still standing under our basket, we got a defensive rebound.

My team made a break to our basket. We spread out and a teammate took a shot but missed. I snagged the offensive rebound. I leaned toward Alan and handed him the ball. He pushed the ball skyward and released it. The ball went straight up about eight feet then fell straight down… total air ball. Then I looked over at Alan’s face. He had a smile so big it started behind one ear and finished behind the other. He was so proud that he had taken a shot. I don’t remember if we won that game. It didn’t matter. Alan won.

A week or maybe two later, Alan passed me in the hallway. He looked in my direction and that same smile came back. A classmate asked me… Who is that? I replied, “That’s Alan. He’s a buddy on my PE basketball team.” I thought to myself… zero baskets, one friend.

Lessons in friendship are lessons we teach each other.

Tickets, please!

Tickets, please!

The spirit of the law might be more powerful than the letter of the law.

I returned to working a patrol shift after serving three successful years as the Juvenile Division detective. While working patrol, I wanted to improve my resume so I would be competitive for assignment to the motorcycle unit. That meant writing a lot of tickets. So, I selected an area of town to patrol that would permit me to focus on traffic enforcement. My strategy… write lots of tickets and be ready to help out wherever else I might be needed in the city.

During the state’s seatbelt enforcement campaign, officers were encouraged to be on the lookout for seat belt violations. It was July 2004, I had already written some radar speeding tags when I stopped an elderly woman for not wearing her seat belt while driving.

Her name was Pat and she was very, very nice. When I told Pat that I had stopped her for not wearing her seat belt, she explained she recently had a mastectomy and that it was painful for her to wear the shoulder strap across her chest. Well, at that point, I knew I would not be issuing a citation.

I advised Pat that she could get a doctor’s note to excuse her from wearing a seat belt while she was receiving treatment following her surgery. I said to Pat… no ticket today just information. She thanked me then sighed. She told me that it had been a rough year for her and her husband, Harold. He was recovering from cancer surgery, and it was not going well. I looked down and asked Pat if I could pray for her and her husband. She said… yes. Pat moved her hand so it rested on the top edge of the driver’s door panel and leaned toward me. I placed my hand on top of hers, closed my eyes… yes, a police officer purposefully closed his eyes on a routine traffic stop… and I said a brief prayer for Pat and Harold after reciting Romans 12:12. That scripture says, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

I felt something on my hand. I opened my eyes and saw a couple of tears had dropped onto the back of my hand. What a blessing! Pat thanked me and drove away. A week or so later, she sent a handwritten note to me. It read… Thank you so much for your kindness and humanity on a most difficult day. I will never forget you and be grateful that a man like you protects us in such a caring way.

My law enforcement career ended many years ago. Along the way, I collected plaques and certificates for a job well done. However, I cherish Pat’s note more than those professional accolades. Many years later, I drove by the address written on Pat’s note. I stopped and knocked on the door; a woman I did not know answered. She said she knew Pat and Harold, and that they had moved to the coast. I asked the woman at the door to say “hello” to Pat from the cop who did not give her a seat belt ticket. The woman said she would.

This story has a postscript.

About 18 years had passed since I met Pat that sunny July morning. I decided to return the favor and drop her a line thanking her for her kind words. After a little online sleuthing, I came across a likely address on the coast. I sent Pat a note and told her how much her words of thanks meant to me. My note came back stamped “Return to Sender.” I set aside my note addressed to Pat for a while.

As I was getting ready to post this story to my website, I decided to try one more time. After some more online detective work, I discovered that Pat and Harold had moved to the Midwest. Sadly, I also learned that Harold had passed away a couple of years ago. I called the funeral home listed in Harold’s obituary, and spoke to a lovely woman named Sheila. I told Sheila that I wanted to send a note to Pat, and I asked if she could help me. Sheila agreed to contact Pat and ask if it was OK for the funeral home to forward my note to her.

I got a call about an hour later from Sheila. She left a message. Pat had moved again and she was now being cared for by her sister. The sister told Sheila that Pat was struggling with some medical issues, but Pat’s sister agreed to give my note to Pat if Sheila could forward it to her.

I sent the note to Pat again. Yes, the spirit is more powerful than the letter.

Birthday

Birthday

They say it’s your birthday / Well, it’s my birthday too, yeah

“Birthday,” John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1968

The pandemic made 2020 a rough year for everyone. My mother passed away early in 2020 from a heart condition. I had some serious medical issues that year followed by multiple surgeries in 2021. For Christmas, my wife gave me a leather-covered notebook. It was a journal with blank pages, and the expectation was that I would fill those pages. I wrote fifty stories in 2021. This is the first one.

Today is my birthday, and I feel ancient. I am 68. That’s twenty years or more older than my teachers in high school and family friends I knew when I was a kid. During that time in my life, I thought those teachers and family friends were the ancient ones. On the occasion of this particular birthday, I am twice as old as my son. Whew… I’m old.

I didn’t know what story I should write first then I recalled a chance meeting with someone famous. Ten years earlier, in 2011, I became interested in learning about the tragedy of human trafficking. Modern slavery is a terrible crime and maybe the most important human rights issue of our time. I attended a weekend anti-trafficking global conference in Silicon Valley hosted by a local nonprofit organization. One of the guest speakers was San Francisco Giants pitcher, Jeremy Affeldt. Jeremy is a standup guy who talks the talk and walks the walk. He pledged $100 to the anti-trafficking movement for every batter he struck out. In 2011, he struck out 54 batters. I was coaching offensive and defensive line as an assistant high school football coach that fall, and Jeremy’s example inspired me to donate $25 for every touchdown scored by the team I was coaching during the 2011 season.

I had to find a way to say “hello” to Jeremy at the conference.

Later that afternoon, I saw him outside the auditorium being interviewed by a sports reporter. As a member of the Giants team that won the World Series in 2010, Jeremy was a local celebrity and fan favorite, but he became the stuff of legend in the 2012 World Series. With the fourth game tied in the bottom of the ninth inning at Comerica Park, Jeremy struck out three Detroit power hitters to preserve a 3-3 tie. The Giants won that game in the tenth inning to complete a four-game Series sweep. As I waited patiently, Jeremy noticed me standing off to the side and he had “that look” on his face. A look which seemed to say… Oh, no. Here’s some old guy who probably pitched in the minors somewhere and he wants to talk baseball. I waited for the interviewer to wrap up then I walked up to Jeremy.

I said hello and told him that I was inspired by his example of making donations for strikeouts and added I had pledged at the beginning of the 2011 season to donate $25 to the anti-trafficking movement for each touchdown scored by the team I was coaching. I thanked Jeremy then turned and walked away. That was it.

My guys played that evening under the Friday night lights and lost 41-21. The next morning when the conference was nearly ready to resume, Jeremy noticed me sipping some coffee waiting for Saturday’s events to start. He gave me a one of those nods guys give each other from across the room before walking toward me. He stopped and asked… How did your team do last night? I replied that we lost but the team scored three touchdowns. Jeremy said… That’s great!

On Monday, I told my players what Jeremy had said… they were very excited to hear that Jeremy Affeldt, a major league pitcher, was impressed with their touchdown production. The season ended two weeks later; we scored 31 touchdowns that year. Before my players turned in their gear, I thanked them for their hard work which just might have made a huge difference in someone’s life.

And that difference is a whole lot better than a birthday.

The Reunion

The Reunion

Auld Lang Syne or times long past. Times we remember at reunions.

My 50-ish Reunion… While COVID delayed a milestone reunion for my 1971 graduating high school class, we were able to get together in 2022. It was a bittersweet time, but fortunately mostly sweet. The very first person I saw was my next-door neighbor from back in the day. Our families were so close that just seeing her was worth the trip from the Bay Area to SoCal. I’m sure my mother looking down was happy to see us hugging and smiling. It was special. It was also sweet to reconnect with former classmates that I had not seen (or thought about) for decades. I would approach someone who caught my eye with a friendly smile… we would bow inward slightly… not as a gesture of respect like Asian folks do but to read each other’s name tags. Our collective eyesight is not what it used to be. Invariably the first questions were… where are you living, are you retired and how many grand kids? After that it was stripping away time back to when we were sitting in a classroom or around the quad at lunchtime or remembering some high school hi-jinks. Too much fun.

The bitter… or more appropriately poignant portion of the reunion was taking time to view the memory wall. The number of absent comrades had grown significantly since our 30th reunion. It was sometimes difficult to keep reading the names. At my 30th reunion, two women approached me at separate times to chat for a while. I didn’t recognize either one but I remembered their names. Each one told me that they were hoping I would be at the 30th reunion because they felt compelled to thank me for being nice to them. I don’t remember doing anything special… just being friendly. They were not popular or top students or accomplished athletes… just regular kids trying to get through high school… but they remembered me being nice to them. It was such a huge compliment and something I did not expect. Humbling. Well, both their names were on the memory wall… side by side. I had to turn away for a moment.

Some of the old high school spirit was rekindled. Our school mascot was a Scottish warrior. Our marching band included bagpipers, and we were regularly roused at school events with “Scotland the Brave” many, many years before “Braveheart” hit the big screen. I remember playing football on Friday nights. I never heard the band… and they were loud… but I do remember hearing that low rumbling sound the bags make as the pipers get ready to play then the skirl from the pipes. It cut through the noise and action at the game. It was stirring. I will tell you this… I would not want to be facing ancient Scots in battle with bagpipes inspiring them. The cool thing is that the reunion organizers invited some pipers from the current band, and they entered with a slow and deliberate march while playing… “Scotland the Brave.” It’s always magical to hear that song.

Some more disappointment. I am not a wealthy man, but I have done all right. We are nearly 70 years old, and I learned the captain of the football team is couch surfing. How does that happen? Well, he had suffered some serious medical issues over the years but to be essentially homeless when he had so much promise is beyond sad. Then, a woman walked up and stood next to me, and joined an impromptu “catching up” session. She had been working as a waitress while caring for her ailing father in a rural town next to an interstate that was losing population. Things were getting better for her; she shared with me plans she was making to move north to stay with her daughter’s family. I just had to sneak a peek at her name tag. My jaw dropped. She was a pep squad leader and one of the most popular girls in our graduating class. Wow… things don’t always turn out the way we expect… maybe they never do.

On the brighter side… I noticed a super attractive woman earlier in the evening and thought she must be the daughter of one of the reunion attendees. She was gorgeous, lithe and looked to be maybe in her early thirties. Our paths did not cross until she also joined that impromptu session near the end of the evening. My jaw dropped again… another former pep squad leader. She looked half her age. She joined the group just to say “Hi” to me. Double wow. We didn’t really run in the same circles during high school, but we knew each other. She was warm and gracious. Things turned out well for her. She married a restaurateur. Although her husband passed away many years ago, she still owns and runs their super successful restaurant business. I’m sure she could not have imagined the turns her life would take after graduation.

There was a final remembrance of our absent comrades. Our class president… now a busy attorney but who was the Jeff Spicoli of our class… you know, the surfer dude from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”… recited some moving poetry about how our classmates from so many years ago may be gone but they still live as they once did in our memories, and it is up to us to keep those memories alive. Then, one of the pipers started playing “Amazing Grace.” It was bittersweet but mostly sweet. Auld Lang Syne… times long past.

Sunday, I drove up I-5 then through the small Central Valley town that I consider my true hometown; I stopped at the church my family attended more than 60 years ago. The lead pastor at that church presided over the services when my mom passed away in early 2020, and I promised him that I would return to his church for a Sunday service. On that Sunday, I made good on my promise. Even though it had been more than two and half years, he recognized me as I walked in and sat down in an empty pew. We chatted a few minutes after his sermon. As I drove away after the service, I thought to myself… I will have to make the trek down to that small church again someday. I will.