101 Stories of Changes, Choices and Growing Up for Kids Ages 9-13

by Jack Canfield

  My writings began to be terrible stories of girls in far worse situations than I, making me feel more fortunate. I moved back and forth between homes every week, and when anything went wrong, it was always the other parent’s fault. I woke up every morning to meet the dawn, which seemed to be paler and more frail than ever before. Alone, not allowing anyone into my reality, I cried.

  Now, two years later, I almost never cry, for I feel that I have cried my share. I have accepted and moved on. I’ve become closer to both of my parents, and throughout the trials they go through, I now feel involved and helpful. My mother’s companion recently left her and she came to me in friendship, looking for support.

  But it still hurts quietly somewhere inside of me. I will never forget, and I will always miss how it was. Even though they fought, we were together and I never appreciated it when we were. As for now, I realize that there is nothing more beautiful than the dawning of a new day and that I must go on.

  Katherine Ackerman, twelve

  10

  ON CHANGES

  Change is the only absolute

  in the world,

  the only thing

  that you can depend on.

  Nothing stays the same.

  Tomorrow will come,

  bringing with it

  new beginnings and sometimes

  unexpected endings.

  You can hold on to the past

  and get left in the dust;

  or, you can choose to

  jump on the ride of life

  and live a new adventure

  with perseverance and

  an open mind.

  Irene Dunlap

  My Very First Kiss

  I was in the seventh grade when I fell in love at the school-bus stop.

  “Who’s that?” I hissed to Annie, my best friend.

  “I dunno. New kid. Let’s find out,” replied Annie. Then she approached him. “Hi!” she dimpled.

  Annie never just smiled at boys. She dimpled. She had the cutest, roundest cheeks with a dimple in each cheek. I was so jealous.

  “I’m Annie. Did you just move here?” Annie lowered her head and looked up at him through her lashes.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “This is my friend, Patty.”

  He looked at me.

  I had never seen eyes so blue . . . eyelashes so long . . . a gaze so intense. . . .

  I FELL IN LOVE.

  Everything you have ever heard about falling in love came true for me at that instant. My legs started to quiver and my kneecaps turned to jelly. I felt like I couldn’t breathe very well. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t even see very well. I just stood there, like the skinny geek that I was, looking at him.

  His name was Jerry. He had moved into a house only four blocks from mine. Jerry was shorter than me, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t have much to say, but that didn’t matter either. I was truly in love.

  I started riding my bike past his house every day, gliding past the big picture window in the front, afraid he was looking out, yet praying and hoping that he was.

  I was miserable and ecstatic all at the same time. I didn’t want to share my feelings about Jerry with Annie, because if I made him look too desirable, she would probably want him. And if she wanted him, she would get him.

  Then one Friday I got an invitation to a party. I couldn’t believe it. It was a boy/girl party. My first. And my parents said I could go. And Jerry was invited.

  The party was at Phyllis’s house, and her parents had a room for parties that was separate from the rest of the house. Her parents wouldn’t be watching us all the time. Annie told me that meant that it would be a kissing party. Perfect. The sweat was already forming under my armpits.

  After two hours of eating potato chips, drinking Cokes and listening to our favorite music, someone suggested that we play Seven Minutes in Heaven. Someone else suggested Spin the Bottle. Spin the Bottle seemed much less threatening than spending seven whole minutes making out in Phyllis’s garage. We all voted on Spin the Bottle, but you had to really kiss, not like some kind of kiss you give your grandma.

  We all sat in a circle: boy-girl-boy-girl. Whoever had the tip of the bottle land on them had to go into the garage with the spinner of the bottle. If you were a girl, and you landed on a girl, you got another turn until you landed on a boy. Same for boys. Couples went into the garage and came back out, some looking weirded out, and some totally grinning.

  Then the bottle landed on Jerry. He went into the garage with Charlene. Then, it was Jerry’s turn to spin the bottle. It landed on Brian. Jerry spun the bottle again. It landed on me.

  I thought I would die, right then and there. I couldn’t even breathe. I tried to untangle my legs and stand up, but everything was jelly. I felt every pair of eyes on me. Somehow, I managed to get up and walk into the garage with Jerry. The door shut behind us.

  It was pitch black. I could hear him breathing, somewhere in the darkness.

  “Patty?”

  “Huh?” Nice. Real smooth.

  My eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness, and I could see the outline of his face. How was this supposed to happen? Was I supposed to close my eyes or keep them open? If I closed my eyes, how would I know where his face was? If I kept them open, would I look cross-eyed to him when we got close—sort of like the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp? What if his eyes were closed and my eyes were open? Or vice versa? Should I pucker up my lips, or just let them relax? Was I supposed to breathe, or hold my breath? Was I supposed to move my face toward him, or wait until he moved toward me?

  I decided to keep my eyes open until the last minute, then close them as we got close enough to kiss. I took a breath, moved forward and closed my eyes. Unfortunately, so did Jerry. He must have had his eyes shut, too.

  KLUNK!!!

  “Ow!” we both said in unison. My front teeth and Jerry’s front teeth had collided with the force of both of us moving forward toward the other.

  “Ow, I think I chipped my tooth,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t see you,” said Jerry.

  “It’s okay. I’ll live.” I ran my tongue over my front tooth. There was a definite chip right in the front. It wasn’t very big, but it was there.

  “How do we explain this one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  All of a sudden I felt like laughing. It had been too much for me: the nervousness of my first kiss, being with Jerry in the garage (in the dark, alone), my chipped tooth. I started to giggle.

  Jerry started to laugh, too. Then we heard someone from the other side of the garage door yelling, “What are you guys doing? You’re taking too long!” For some reason, that was even funnier than the collision. Then they started pounding on the door.

  “Okay, let’s go.” Jerry grabbed my hand as we opened the door and walked into the room. Jerry and I smiled at each other. Annie looked upset. I was in heaven.

  The next day, Annie tried to get me to tell her what happened, but I just smiled. I think she was jealous of me for the very first time.

  I’d like to say that it was the beginning of a boyfriend/ girlfriend relationship, but that just wasn’t the case. For some strange reason, I started feeling differently about Jerry. I now saw him as he really was: a short boy with bright blue eyes who was my friend. In the eighth grade, I fell in love with someone else.

  But every once in a while, when I least expect it, I’ll run my tongue across my front teeth and feel the chip in my left front tooth. That’s when I remember Jerry—the cutest boy in the seventh grade—and my very first kiss.

  Patty Hansen

  DENNIS THE MENACE

  “Where do you put your noses?”

  DENNIS THE MENACE. ® Used by permission of Hank Ketcham and ©by North America Syndicate.

  A Life Once Lived

  Every second brings a fresh beginning, every hour holds a new promise, every night our dreams can bring hope, and every day is w
hat you choose to make it.

  Jessica Heringer, fifteen

  When I was thirteen, I found myself at home alone after school every day while my parents worked until seven or eight o’clock each night. I was bored and I felt somewhat neglected. So I started hanging around with other kids who were at home unsupervised after school.

  One day, I was at my friend’s house and she had some other friends over as well. There were no parents at her house and mine were in Nashville; we had total freedom! As we sat there doing nothing, one of the guys pulled some marijuana out of his coat pocket. In this crowd, I was the only one there that had never tried it, so, under pressure to be cool, I did.

  As the weekend approached, everyone was talking about a party at my friend’s house. I ended up partying with people I didn’t even know and had my first experience of being drunk and high. I was now ruining my life, but as far as I knew, I was making more friends and hanging with a different crowd. The only thing that concerned me was partying on the weekends and looking for something to give me a better high.

  One day, when I was in the eighth grade, my best friend and I were bored out of our minds. We thought that it would be really cool to go to my house where no one was home, find the keys to my dad’s car and drive all over town showing off to our friends. When we ran a stop sign with a cop car right behind us, we were taken in for stealing my dad’s car.

  Things at school were equally as bad. I was suspended from school twice for fighting. The second time I was out for three days. I no longer cared about my grades and was literally failing school. I never looked at my parents’ opinions as being important anymore. It seemed like I was always grounded, but I would sneak out of the house at night to see my friends. When my parents discovered that I was sneaking out, my dad no longer had any type of trust for me. I had put myself into a position of having no freedoms whatsoever. No matter what, I was never happy, and my parents and I argued constantly. My life was falling apart.

  No longer was I the girl who was getting good grades, no longer did I have parents who trusted me, or friends that really even cared. I lost all that; it was gone.

  So one night I sat with a bottle of prescription pills, sure these pills were going to get rid of all my pain. It was late at night so I thought, No one’s at home so who’s going to stop me? I stared at the pill bottle with a deep feeling of hate toward myself. I never thought that an emotion like this could take over my life.

  I began sobbing and tears were rolling down my cheeks. I wondered if anyone was going to care. I told myself that they didn’t care now, so why would they care when I’m gone?

  Then I heard a car door shut, and I knew my parents had come home. I quickly took as many of the pills as I could with a couple drinks of water.

  I sat on the couch with my dad, stepmom and one of their friends. They had no clue as to what was about to happen. We were watching my favorite TV show. Then, the weirdest thing happened. I laughed with my dad for the first time in what seemed like forever. Suddenly, I no longer wanted to die. I realized that I loved my family and that they really loved me. Now what was I to do? I ran to the bathroom and made myself vomit up all the pills.

  I lay awake all night thinking. I realized that my priorities were all wrong and if I kept up this behavior and kept hanging around the same people, my life would never improve. I recognized that I was the one who made my life what it was, so I also had the power to change it.

  The first thing that I did was stop taking drugs and hanging around that crowd. Within days, I noticed a huge improvement in my self-esteem. Then, right after the first of the year, I switched schools so that I could get away from my “friends” who only cared about partying all the time. It wasn’t long before I had made new friends and my grades improved. (I now have a 4.0 grade average—straight A’s!)

  The new choices I’ve made totally beat waking up with hangovers and not caring about where my life was headed. I made cheerleading this year and I’m having so much fun. Drugs never made me feel this high.

  I’ll never know if I was going to die that night, but I do know one thing; I’m glad I didn’t. I learned from my mistakes and found that ending life completely is not the way to go. It is never too late to change your direction. Every day, every hour is a new opportunity to begin again.

  Brandi Bacon, fifteen

  Papa

  When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  Papa died last night. He was my mom’s dad, and I knew him for as long as I can remember.

  He told me that if I studied hard and got good grades he’d buy me my first car. He promised. I’m twelve now and the oldest in my family.

  I bet he was thinking that the thought of my own car would keep me focused on school. And, of course, if I really buckled down it would take the pressure off Mom.

  Mom always said I was born with one foot out the door. Papa knew that. And my quest to grow up quickly and dash out that front door had always been hard on Mom. Papa knew that too, and that’s when his voice roared like a lion, “Education, Brian. That’s the key!”

  Yet, as if he knew what I was feeling, he shook his head back and forth and pretended to whine, “I know, I know, I didn’t want to study either.” He put his arm around me and whispered, “But you have to do it,” as if he were telling me a secret. Our secret. I think he was just trying to help make growing up easier.

  I’ll never forget the look on Grandma’s face. “Your grandfather,” she said, rolling her eyes, almost like she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  But once her eyes stopped rolling, she looked right at him, the way Mom looks at us when she wants us to hear her words. She told him to calm down. “Don’t get Brian’s hopes up,” she said.

  But Papa wasn’t like a lot of people. He meant what he said.

  I think his promises sometimes worried Grandma a little. So he just did what Papa always did. He purred like a kitten and snuggled up to Grandma and pinched her cheeks. Then he made a kissing sound with his lips over and over through the air, the way I’d seen him do it a thousand times before. And then he told her how much he loved me.

  He used to kiss my brothers, sister, Mom and I that same way. Mom said Papa came from a long line of cheek pinchers. She said it was a family tradition. His father and grandfather did it too. I think it was the Italian in him.

  Papa showed me that you can love people in front of others. He was always kissing us and pinching our cheeks. He didn’t care who was watching. I remember how all that squeezing used to hurt at first, but we got used to it. I could tell Grandma got used to his way a long time ago. I think Grandma knew that Papa needed to love his family up close.

  When Papa came to visit he always wanted to be near us. And he brought us books and magazines because he said we should read every day.

  He would sit with us and we would read together. I think he liked to hear our voices. He brought over lots of puzzles, too. He said they were important for exercising our mind. I think he liked to see us learn.

  I always felt good about my family after Papa came to visit. His hugs were stronger than anybody’s and he liked to laugh out loud with us. He didn’t seem to mind our noise. He said we were just being kids. I think he remembered what it was like.

  I won’t forget the last time Papa was here with us. He came over to hang a fan with a light on it, outside, in our patio. I remember how he worked all day, climbing up and down the ladder, exchanging one tool for another. I helped him for as long as I could, though after awhile I got tired. But he kept on working.

  He wanted us to be able to eat outside during warm summer nights. He said the fan would help, but it needed to be put in right. And of course, it couldn’t squeak.

  Last night, the last night I would see him, we all ate dinner together under the light and the quiet breeze from the fan. And not a thing squeaked. In fact, nothing ever squeaked when Papa was around.

  Papa always
said his tools were his treasures. He never went anywhere without them. I guess he just liked to fix things. I know Mom’s going to miss his help around here.

  I’m sad that Papa’s gone. Today the phone keeps ringing. Lots of people are calling to say they’re sorry that Papa died. Mom has put me in charge for awhile. She wants me to watch my brothers and sister. She has arrangements to make because Papa died.

  Now my littlest brother is looking to me. He says he didn’t want Papa to die. He wants to know if he keeps eating those healthy apples, does that mean he won’t get old and die?

  I don’t have an answer for my brother. I’m sorry. He has so many questions. “You’re so smart, Brian,” Papa used to always tell me. I think I’m not so smart right now.

  “Does everybody get old and die?” my brother asks.

  “No,” I tell him, “that’s not the way it always goes. Sometimes people die sooner than that, from other things. That’s why Mom holds your hand when you cross the street and makes sure we’re buckled up when we drive in the car.”

  “Then I don’t ever want to let go of her hand and I want to live in the car where I’ll be safe,” he cries.

  “I’m not sure that’s the right way to live,” I tell him.

  “Then I want to be a cowboy. Do cowboys die?’’ he asks.

  “Yeah, cowboys die,” I say.

  “Then I want to be the president. Do presidents die?” he asks, still crying.

  “Yes,” I nod. “Even presidents die, I learned that in school. It’s better to think about living. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Those words just fall out my mouth. Suddenly I realize what Mom means when she talks about doing the right thing. It’s kind of like you really only have one choice. I think Papa would say so too.