Have You Seen Them?

From time to time our email inboxes can be inundated with the equivalent of spam sent from well-intentioned, forward-happy friends who are touched by a story they read online and choose to send to everyone else to be touched as well.  The thing is, so many times those forwards come from folks who have a lot more time on their hands than the average working mom of soon-to-be three who would rather spend time at home unwinding than on the computer where she’s been perched for the past eight hours.  I digress.

From time to time, those forwards actually do tug on the heartstrings and cause us all to ponder our position in life and possibly how we can make a difference in someone else’s life for the better.  There’s the one about a young elementary student who gave his teacher all he had one Christmas, only to receive her appreciation, support and praise throughout the rest of his life.  You may have seen the one about the Roane County (TN) high school principal praying over a football game in 2000.  Chances are you’ve received the one about the young doctor in his medical school graduation speech thanking a high school friend for saving him from suicide.   Though only one of these stories is true, all of these internet chains have one thing in common: they give the reader the sense that they can be and can do something more if only they take the opportunity to do so.

One more internet tale that has circulated in the recent past is worthy of note here for it’s a story of advocacy for a person with special needs, though the versions I have read are not about a Jewish boy named Shaya.  Rather I have seen it about a father telling a story about his son, Shay, who walked by a neighborhood park and wanted to play baseball with the boys on the field.  Apparently the team that was losing by six runs in the eighth inning allowed him to come into the game to bat in the ninth.   By the time he stepped up to the plate with runners in scoring position, they were only down by three.  The pitcher walked closer to him to try to give him something with which he could make contact.  When Shay first swings, he doesn’t come close, so a teammate joins him at the plate to help with the next pitch.  They hit a slow roller to the pitcher who throws it over the first baseman’s head, allowing Shay to go to first.  The infield proceeds to intentionally make error after error allowing Shay to continue around the bases for a grand slam, scoring all runners and winning the game.  He became a hero that day for the team, but his dad says the boys who gave him the opportunity were the real heroes.

Though the moving fictional story is adapted from a 1999 book entitled Echoes of the Maggid, it has still touched the hearts of many who have received it over the years through the powers of the web.  And it leads me to wonder, are there really kids out there like that who would help a guy with special needs achieve something he’d never done before?  I sure hope so!  Now I only question, where are they, and have you seen them?