The Best of Reader's Digest

by Editors of Reader's Digest

  Vasquez knew Amar wasn’t in the clear yet. He’d been underwater for five minutes, his heart had stopped, oxygen had stopped circulating through his body. If he survived, he would likely be brain-damaged.

  * * *

  At the hospital, doctors kept Amar on a ventilator and in an induced coma for ten days. Reardon, Earle and Vasquez came regularly to the intensive care unit to see the child and get progress reports. Would he live? And if he lived, would the little person who thought and played and had feelings survive? No one could say.

  Amira stayed by her child night and day, rarely leaving his side. Doctors gradually lowered the oxygen to allow Amar to breathe on his own. Finally, on the tenth day, they decided to remove his breathing tube and rouse him from his coma. Hopefully, his youth would pull him through.

  A raspy voice is the only residual effect Amar (No. 59 above, with family) has from his underwater ordeal.

  It did. Two days later, he was sitting up in bed, playing Super Mario on a Game Boy, absorbed in digital adventures, oblivious of his own underwater odyssey.

  A slightly raspy voice is the only residual effect Amar has. His father needed surgery on his leg, which he injured in the crash. He is recovering. Amira is fine, but Emrah suffers from lingering leg and back pain.

  The Jakupovics are amazed and profoundly grateful that the right people, in the right order—diver, nurse, boat captain, police and EMTs—each one with the right skills, showed up in time to save their son.

  Originally published in the January 2007 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  The Jakupovic family still lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. Amar played football in high school. His older brother, Emrah, also made a complete recovery. He has a young daughter. The family stays in touch with rescuer Kerry Reardon.

  Humor Hall of Fame

  Cartoon by Chris Weyant

  Tunisians, I’ve learned, are known for being generous with compliments. As I walked along the harbor with my husband one day, a Tunisian man shouted to him, “Hey, you a very lucky man! Your woman has big legs!” I could have done without such flattery.

  —TRAVELMATCH.CO.UK

  Throughout our tour of an early American bathhouse in Hot Springs, Arkansas, I explained to my four-year-old grandson what people once did there. When we came upon a mannequin at a desk, I told him, “She was probably writing a letter home to her friends telling them about her vacation to Hot Springs.” My grandson asked, “And then she died and they stuffed her?”

  —CYNTHIA FRANKLIN GRENADA, MISSISSIPPI

  On our way to go spelunking, we got lost on a country road. We stopped to ask a farmer, “Is this the road to Waynesville?” “Yes, it is,” he replied. As we started to drive off, we barely heard him add, “But you’re going the wrong way.”

  —DOUG HISSONG CYPRESS, TEXAS

  Life on the Funny Farm

  by Laura Cunningham, condensed from the New York Times Magazine

  Sometimes dreams are better left in bed.

  My husband and I had always dreamed of raising our own food. Before purchasing our farm, I imagined I would pass platters of young vegetables across our table, along with the modest message “Our own.” But today the two of us stagger, lugging 50-pound sacks of chow to a crowd of 45 fat animals who do little but exist in a digestive trance. How did I, a city person, get stuck running a salad bar for useless creatures?

  We began with “our own” garden, a disaster from which we learned nothing. After a season of rototilling, fertilizing, fencing and back-dislocating labor, we produced “the $700 tomato.” It was a good tomato—spared by the groundhogs who left their dental impressions on all the others.

  The goats came next. We had always loved goat cheese and imagined a few dainty dairy goats would supply us with chèvre or feta whilst cavorting as adorable pets. Thus, I accepted delivery of two demented goat sisters, Lulu and Lulubelle.

  While I knew goats didn’t simply extrude neat white logs of Montrachet, I had not known that the “goat person” must become involved with milking platforms, teat problems and, most significantly, sexual liaisons. Goats won’t give milk unless they have been mated, and in our town the only billy around was Bucky, a horned and whiskered creature with an odor that seemed visible. On his initial conjugal visit, he and “the girls” kicked up such a fuss that they did $2,000 worth of damage to the barn before eating the windowsills. The romance was canceled.

  Lulu and Lulubelle now occasionally entertain us with a goat frolic on our front lawn, banging heads and performing a few choreographed moves that recall some Dionysian rite. But most of the time, the girls simply munch and relieve themselves.

  Next came the dream of fresh eggs, gathered warm in the mornings—a dream that gave way to the reality of 38 irritable Rhode Island Red hens. After several hundred dollars’ worth of chicken feed, there was, one morning, an egg—brown, silky and warm—under the hen who almost took my hand off when I reached for it.

  Hens, I soon learned, are cranky creatures. Even the rooster has let us down. We expected him to wake us with his proud crow. But on the Phony Farm (as we call our spread), the rooster must be shaken awake at noon.

  With the chickens came the geese, who make the least sense of all. We ordered them on impulse from the poultry catalogue when we read the listing: Toulouse goslings.

  Goslings. The word had a nursery-rhyme appeal. But my five chartreuse-fuzzed baby geese soon quacked and snacked themselves into 20-pound fatties. For a time, I labored under the delusion they would fly south for the winter. I had seen a documentary, “The Incredible Flight of the Snow Geese,” and thought of taping it on the VCR for my geese. But they fly about as well as I do—skidding a few feet down to their plastic kiddy swimming pool.

  I became resigned to running a goose spa, but my husband had other ideas. “Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat,” he hissed with a Jack Nicholson glint in his eye. I was appalled. How could he consider roasting an animal that thought of me as Mother Goose?

  The goslings had followed me to a nearby pond, where neighbors assured me I could relocate them (“Once they hit that water, they’ll never leave”). But when I left, so did they—in single file. I turned around and saw them, their goony gray heads raised above the high grass, seeking only to walk in my footsteps.

  The goslings had followed me to a nearby pond, where neighbors assured me I could relocate them.

  I was touched. For life. Their fuzz gone, their voices raucous, the geese have become kind of repulsive pets. The only male, Arnold, has even goosed me when I turned my back on him. The bad news is, they can live to be over 30.

  Today I buy my “farm-fresh fare.” I pick up my goose from a prime meat market, and find “fresh laid” eggs and natural goat cheese at the fancy-food emporium. The eggs cost $2.50 a half-dozen, but they’re still cheaper than my own eggs, which cost $300 each if you factor in things like henhouses.

  But the best news is that I can roast a goose, baste it, enjoy the aroma and know: It’s not Arnold. Arnold is out in the kiddy pool, having incestuous sex with his sisters.

  Originally published in the September1991 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  Stopping a Kidnapper

  by Alyssa Jung

  A boy’s bravery saves a little girl from the unimaginable.

  It was a scene Norman Rockwell might have painted: three kids laughing as they took turns riding a scooter on their quiet street. On a crisp December afternoon in Wichita Falls, Texas, 11-year-old TJ Smith had just jumped off the scooter as his neighbor Kim,I age 7, claimed her turn and her sister Julie,* 9, looked on. Kim straddled the scooter and paused to catch her breath. That was when the bearded man with a head of messy curls appeared. Without uttering a word, he picked Kim up off the scooter and calmly strode away.

  “He cradled her like a baby and just walked down the street,” says TJ. In fact, the composed way the man held Kim led TJ to believe he must have been a relative. But something wasn’t right. “I could see he
r face,” TJ said. “She was scared.”

  Kim began kicking and flailing, trying to get free of the man’s grip. “What are you doing?” Julie shouted. But the man, unfazed, walked to an alley and disappeared.

  TJ’s first impulse was to chase after them. But what was a four-foot-tall, 70-pound kid going to do to stop a grown man? “I wanted to help, but I couldn’t do it myself,” he says. So he ran to his grown-up neighbors’ home.

  Brad Ware and his wife were relaxing on the couch in their living room when their front door burst open.

  “Brad!” yelled TJ. “A man just picked up a little girl and took her into the alley!”

  “Brad!” yelled TJ. “A man just picked up a little girl and took her into the alley!”

  And just like that, TJ was gone, back on the street sprinting after his abducted friend. “I ran back to see if they were still there,” says TJ.

  Ware and his wife jumped into their car and trailed close behind.

  TJ ran to the end of the street and turned the corner. He had no idea what to expect or who might be waiting for him. But he needed to find Kim. If he lost her, TJ feared, she might never be found alive.

  Once TJ hit the alley, he spotted the man a couple of blocks down, standing in front of an abandoned white house. He was shoving the panicked girl through a busted window.

  Just then, Ware and his wife pulled up. “Stay here,” Ware told TJ. With Ware now bearing down on him, the man let go of Kim in the window frame and walked away, almost nonchalantly, before breaking into a run. Ware caught up with him. They struggled. Ware kicked the man in the groin and wrapped him in his arms. The man squirmed free and fled across the street. When he stumbled, Ware lunged and tackled him.

  Alerted by Julie, the police and the victim’s mother arrived on the scene. Kim dashed into the safety of her mother’s arms.

  Meanwhile, officers cuffed and arrested Raeshawn Perez, 26. He was charged with aggravated kidnapping.

  There were a few heroes that day, but Ware insists that the quick-thinking, dogged 11-year-old deserves most of the credit. “You know, he’s the one who saved the girl,” Ware told KFDX.

  That news came as no surprise to TJ’s mother. “This is exactly his character,” says Angie Hess Smith. “His first thought is not of himself. It’s always of others.”

  Originally published in the June 2017 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  I. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

  The Little Boat That Sailed Through Time

  by Arnold Berwick

  There is nothing for sale that can compete with what you make by hand with the guidance of your grandfather.

  I spent the tenth summer of my childhood, the most memorable months of my life, in western Norway at the mountain farm where my mother was born. What remains most vivid to my mind are the times I shared with my Grandfather Jorgen.

  The first thing I noticed about Grandfather was his thick, bushy mustache and broad shoulders. The second thing was how he could work. All summer I watched him. He mowed grass with wide sweeps of the scythe, raked it up and hung it on racks to dry. Later he gathered the hay in huge bundles tied with a rope, and carried them on his back, one after another, to the barn.

  He sharpened the scythes on a grindstone, slaughtered a pig, caught and salted fish, ground barley in a water-driven gristmill and grew and stored potatoes. He had to produce enough in the short summer to carry the family and the animals through the long, snowbound winter. He stopped only long enough to eat and to sleep a few winks.

  And yet he found time for just the two of us. One day after a trip to a faraway town, he handed me a knife and sheath, saying, “These are for you. Now watch.”

  With calloused hands, he showed me how to make a flute.

  He slipped his own knife from its sheath, cut a thin, succulent branch from a tree and sat down beside me. With calloused hands, he showed me how to make a flute. Even today, 63 years later, whenever I hear the pure note of a flute I think of how he made music from nothing but a thin branch of a tree. Living on an isolated mountain farm, far from neighbors and stores, he had to make do with what he had.

  As an American, I always thought people simply bought whatever they needed. Whether Grandfather knew this, I don’t know. But it seems he wanted to teach me something, because one day he said, “Come. I have something for you.”

  I followed him into the basement, where he led me to a workbench by a window. “You should have a toy boat. You can sail it at Storvassdal,” he said, referring to a small lake a few miles from the house.

  Swell, I thought, looking around for the boat. But there was none.

  Grandfather picked up a block of wood, about 18 inches long. “The boat is in there,” he said. “You can bring it out.” Then he handed me a razor-sharp ax.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so Grandfather showed me how to handle the tool. I started to chop away to shape the bow. Later, after he taught me the proper use of hammer and chisel, I began to hollow out the hull.

  Often Grandfather joined me in the basement, repairing homemade wooden rakes or sharpening tools. He answered my questions and made suggestions, but he saw to it I did all the work myself.

  “It’ll be a fine boat, and you’ll be making it all with your own hands,” he said. “No one can give you what you do for yourself.” The words rang in my head as I worked.

  Finally I finished the hull and made a mast and sail. The boat wasn’t much to look at, but I was proud of what I had built.

  Then, with my creation, I headed for Storvassdal. Climbing the mountain slope, I entered the woods and followed a steep path. I crossed tiny streams, trod on spongy moss and ascended slippery stone steps—higher, higher until I was above the timberline. After four or five miles, I came at last to a small lake that had been carved out by a glacier. Its sloping sides were covered with stones of all shapes and sizes.

  I launched my boat and day-dreamed while a slight breeze carried the little craft to an opposite shore. The air was crisp and clean. There was no sound but the occasional warble of a bird.

  I would return to the lake many times to sail my boat. One day dark clouds came in, burst open and poured sheets of rain. I pressed myself against a large boulder and felt its captured warmth. I thought of “Rock of Ages” (… let me hide myself in thee”). Through the rain, I saw my little boat pushing its way over the ripples. I imagined a ship bravely fighting a turbulent sea. Then the sun came out, and all was well again.

  A crisis developed when we were ready to return to America. “You cannot bring that boat home with you,” my mother said. We already had too much baggage.

  I pleaded, but to no avail.

  With saddened heart, I went to Storvassdal for the last time, found that large boulder, placed my boat in a hollow space under its base, piled stones to hide it and resolved to return one day to recover my treasure.

  I said good-bye to my grandfather, not knowing I would never see him again. “Farewell,” he said, as he clasped my hand tightly.

  * * *

  In the summer of 1964, I went to Norway with my parents and my wife and children. One day I left the family farmhouse and hiked up to Storvassdal, looking for the large boulder. There were plenty around. My search seemed hopeless.

  I was about to give up when I saw a pile of small stones jammed under a boulder. I slowly removed the stones and reached into the hollow space beneath the boulder. My hand touched something that moved. I pulled the boat out and held it in my hands. For 34 years it had been resting there, waiting for my return. The rough, bare-wood hull and mast were hardly touched by age; only the cloth sail had disintegrated.

  I shall never forget that moment. As I cradled the boat, I felt my grandfather’s presence. He had died 22 years before, and yet he was there. We three were together again—Grandfather and me and the little boat, the tangible link that bound us together.

  I brought the boat back to the farm for the others to see and carved “1930” and “1964”
on its side. Someone suggested I take it home to America. “No,” I said. “Its home is under that boulder at Storvassdal.” I took it back to its resting place.

  I returned to the lake in 1968, 1971, 1977, and 1988. Each time as I held the little boat and carved the year on its side, my grandfather seemed near.

  My last trip to Storvassdal was in 1991. This time I brought two of my granddaughters from America: Catherine, 13, and Claire, 12. As we climbed the mountain, I thought of my grandfather and compared his life with that of my granddaughters. Catherine and Claire are made of the same stuff as their ancestors. They are determined and independent—I see it in the way they carry themselves at work and play. And yet my grandfather seemed to have so little to work with, while my grand-daughters have so much.

  Usually the things we dream of, then work and struggle for, are what we value the most. Have my granddaughters, blessed with abundance, been denied life’s pleasures?

  Working tirelessly on that isolated farm, my grandfather taught me that we should accept and be grateful for what we have—whether it be much or little. We must bear the burdens and relish the joys. There is so much we cannot control, but we must try to make things better when we are able. We must depend upon ourselves to make our own way as best we can.

  Growing up in a comfortable suburban home, my granddaughters have been presented with a different situation. But I hope—I believe—they will in their own way be able to cope well as my grandfather coped, and learn the lesson my grandfather taught me all those years ago. On the day I took them to Storvassdal, I hoped they would somehow understand the importance of the little boat and its simple message of self-reliance.

  High in the mountain, I hesitated to speak lest I disturb our tranquility. Then Claire looked up and broke my reverie as she said softly, “Grandpa, someday I’ll come back.” She paused. “And I’ll bring my children.”