Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition

by Jack Canfield

  “Yes, sir. I sure will.”

  But when Les hung up the telephone, he said to himself, “Now, he must think I’m crazy.”

  Les did dial the telephone, but it wasn’t to call in another deejay. He called his mother first, and then his girlfriend. “You all go out on the front porch and turn up the radio because I’m about to come on the air!” he said.

  He waited about 15 minutes before he called the general manager. “Mr. Klein, I can’t find nobody,” Les said.

  Mr. Klein then asked, “Young man, do you know how to work the controls in the studio?”

  “Yes sir,” replied Les.

  Les darted into the booth, gently moved Rock aside and sat down at the turntable. He was ready. And he was hungry. He flipped on the microphone switch and said, “Look out! This is me, LB, triple P — Les Brown, Your Platter Playing Poppa. There were none before me and there will be none after me. Therefore, that makes me the one and only. Young and single and love to mingle. Certified, bona fide, indubitably qualified to bring you satisfaction, a whole lot of action. Look out, baby, I’m your lo-o-ove man!”

  Because of his preparation, Les was ready. He wowed the audience and his general manager. From that fateful beginning, Les went on to a successful career in broadcasting, politics, public speaking and television.

  ~Jack Canfield

  Willing to Pay the Price

  Opportunity is a bird that never perches.

  ~Claude McDonald

  When my wife Maryanne and I were building our Greenspoint Mall hair salon 13 years ago, a Vietnamese fellow would stop by each day to sell us doughnuts. He spoke hardly any English, but he was always friendly, and through smiles and sign language we got to know each other. His name was Le Van Vu.

  During the day Le worked in a bakery and at night he and his wife listened to audiotapes to learn English. I later learned that they slept on sacks full of sawdust on the floor of the back room of the bakery.

  In Vietnam the Van Vu family was one of the wealthiest in Southeast Asia. They owned almost one-third of North Vietnam, including huge holdings in industry and real estate. However, after his father was brutally murdered, Le moved to South Vietnam with his mother, where he went to school and eventually became a lawyer.

  Like his father before him, Le prospered. He saw an opportunity to construct buildings to accommodate the ever-expanding American presence in South Vietnam and soon became one of the most successful builders in the country.

  On a trip to the North, however, Le was captured by the North Vietnamese and thrown into prison for three years. He escaped by killing five soldiers and made his way back to South Vietnam where he was arrested again. The South Vietnamese government had assumed he was a “plant” from the North.

  After serving time in prison, Le got out and started a fishing company, eventually becoming the largest canner in South Vietnam.

  When Le learned that the U.S. troops and embassy personnel were about to pull out of his country, he made a life-changing decision.

  He took all of the gold he had hoarded, loaded it aboard one of his fishing vessels and sailed with his wife out to the American ships in the harbor. He then exchanged all his riches for safe passage out of Vietnam to the Philippines, where he and his wife were taken into a refugee camp.

  After gaining access to the president of the Philippines, Le convinced him to make one of his boats available for fishing and Le was back in business again. Before he left the Philippines two years later en route for America (his ultimate dream), Le had successfully developed the entire fishing industry in the Philippines.

  But en route to America, Le became distraught and depressed about having to start over again with nothing. His wife tells of how she found him near the railing of the ship, about to jump overboard. “Le,” she told him, “if you do jump, whatever will become of me? We’ve been together for so long and through so much. We can do this together.” It was all the encouragement that Le Van Vu needed.

  When he and his wife arrived in Houston in 1972, they were flat broke and spoke no English. In Vietnam, family takes care of family, and Le and his wife found themselves ensconced in the back room of his cousin’s bakery in the Greenspoint Mall. We were building our salon just a couple of hundred feet away.

  Now, as they say, here comes the “message” part of this story: Le’s cousin offered both Le and his wife jobs in the bakery. After taxes, Le would take home $175 per week, his wife $125. Their total annual income, in other words, was $15,600. Further, his cousin offered to sell them the bakery whenever they could come up with a $30,000 down payment. The cousin would finance the remainder with a note for $90,000.

  Here’s what Le and his wife did:

  Even with a weekly income of $300, they decided to continue to live in the back room. They kept clean by taking sponge baths for two years in the mall’s restrooms. For two years their diet consisted almost entirely of bakery goods. Each year, for two years, they lived on a total, that’s right, a total of $600, saving $30,000 for the down payment.

  Le later explained his reasoning, “If we got ourselves an apartment, which we could afford on $300 per week, we’d have to pay the rent. Then, of course, we’d have to buy furniture. Then we’d have to have transportation to and from work, so that meant we’d have to buy a car. Then we’d have to buy gasoline for the car as well as insurance. Then we’d probably want to go places in the car, so that meant we’d need to buy clothes and toiletries. So I knew that if we got that apartment, we’d never get our $30,000 together.”

  Now, if you think you’ve heard everything about Le, let me tell you, there’s more: After he and his wife had saved the $30,000 and bought the bakery, Le once again sat down with his wife for a serious chat. They still owed $90,000 to his cousin, he said, and as difficult as the past two years had been, they had to remain living in that back room for one more year.

  I’m proud to tell you that in one year, my friend and mentor Le Van Vu and his wife, saving virtually every nickel of profit from the business, paid off the $90,000 note, and in just three years, owned an extremely profitable business free and clear.

  Then, and only then, the Van Vus went out and got their first apartment. To this day, they continue to save on a regular basis, live on an extremely small percentage of their income, and, of course, always pay cash for any of their purchases.

  Do you think that Le Van Vu is a millionaire today? I am happy to tell you, many times over.

  ~John McCormack

  Everybody Has a Dream

  Jumping at several small opportunities

  may get us there more quickly than waiting for one big one to come along.

  ~Hugh Allen

  Some years ago I took on an assignment in a southern county to work with people on public welfare. What I wanted to do was show that everybody has the capacity to be self-sufficient and all we have to do is to activate them. I asked the county to pick a group of people who were on public welfare, people from different racial groups and different family constellations. I would then see them as a group for three hours every Friday. I also asked for a little petty cash to work with as I needed it.

  The first thing I said after I shook hands with everybody was, “I would like to know what your dreams are.” Everyone looked at me as if I were kind of wacky.

  “Dreams? We don’t have dreams.”

  I said, “Well, when you were a kid what happened? Wasn’t there something you wanted to do?”

  One woman said to me, “I don’t know what you can do with dreams. The rats are eating up my kids.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s terrible. No, of course, you are very much involved with the rats and your kids. How can that be helped?”

  “Well, I could use a new screen door because there are holes in my screen door.”

  I asked, “Is there anybody around here who knows how to fix a screen door?”

  There was a man in the group, and he said, “A long time ago I used to do things like that but now I
have a terribly bad back, but I’ll try.”

  I told him I had some money if he would go to the store and buy some screening and go and fix the lady’s screen door. “Do you think you can do that?”

  “Yes, I’ll try.”

  The next week, when the group was seated, I said to the woman, “Well, is your screen door fixed?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “Then we can start dreaming, can’t we?” She sort of smiled at me. I said to the man who did the work, “How do you feel?”

  He said, “Well, you know, it’s a very funny thing. I’m beginning to feel a lot better.”

  That helped the group to begin to dream. These seemingly small successes allowed the group to see that dreams were not insane. These small steps began to get people to see and feel that something really could happen.

  I began to ask other people about their dreams. One woman shared that she always wanted to be a secretary. I said, “Well, what stands in your way?” (That’s always my next question.)

  She said, “I have six kids, and I don’t have anyone to take care of them while I’m away.”

  “Let’s find out,” I said. “Is there anybody in this group who would take care of six kids for a day or two a week while this woman gets some training here at the community college?”

  One woman said, “I got kids, too, but I could do that.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said. So a plan was created and the woman went to school.

  The woman who took in the children became a licensed foster care person. In 12 weeks I had all these people off public welfare. I’ve not only done that once, I’ve done it many times.

  ~Virginia Satir

  Follow Your Dream

  Don’t live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.

  ~Wendy Wasserstein

  I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch in San Ysidro. He has let me use his house to put on fundraising events to raise money for youth at risk programs.

  The last time I was there he introduced me by saying, “I want to tell you why I let Jack use my house. It all goes back to a story about a young man who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy’s high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.

  “That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on the 200-acre dream ranch.

  “He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read, ‘See me after class.’

  “The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, ‘Why did I receive an F?’

  “The teacher said, ‘This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you’ll have to pay large stud fees. There’s no way you could ever do it.’ Then the teacher added, ‘If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.’

  “The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, ‘Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.’

  “Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all. He stated, ‘You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream.’”

  Monty then turned to the assembled group and said, “I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of my 200-acre horse ranch. I still have that school paper framed over the fireplace.” He added, “The best part of the story is that two summers ago that same schoolteacher brought thirty kids to camp out on my ranch for a week. When the teacher was leaving, he said, ‘Look, Monty, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids’ dreams. Fortunately you had enough gumption not to give up on yours.’”

  Don’t let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what.

  ~Jack Canfield

  The Box

  Opportunity is a parade. Even as one chance passes, the next is a fife and drum echoing in the distance.

  ~Robert Brault

  When I was a senior in college, I came home for Christmas vacation and anticipated a fun-filled fortnight with my two brothers. We were so excited to be together, we volunteered to watch the store so that my mother and father could take their first day off in years. The day before my parents went to Boston, my father took me quietly aside to the little den behind the store. The room was so small that it held only a piano and a hide-a-bed couch. In fact, when you pulled the bed out, it filled the room and you could sit on the foot of it and play the piano. Father reached behind the old upright and pulled out a cigar box. He opened it and showed me a little pile of newspaper articles. I had read so many Nancy Drew detective stories that I was excited and wide-eyed over the hidden box of clippings.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  Father replied seriously, “These are articles I’ve written and some letters to the editor that have been published.” As I began to read, I saw at the bottom of each neatly clipped article the name Walter Chapman. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d done this?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t want your mother to know. She has always told me that since I didn’t have much education, I shouldn’t try to write. I wanted to run for some political office also, but she told me I shouldn’t try. I guess she was afraid she’d be embarrassed if I lost. I just wanted to try for the fun of it. I figured I could write without her knowing it, and so I did. When each item would be printed, I’d cut it out and hide it in this box. I knew someday I’d show the box to someone, and it’s you.”

  He watched me as I read over a few of the articles and when I looked up, his big blue eyes were moist. “I guess I tried for something too big this last time,” he added. “Did you write something else?”

  “Yes, I sent some suggestions in to our denominational magazine on how the national nominating committee could be selected more fairly. It’s been three months since I sent it in. I guess I tried for something too big.”

  This was such a new side to my fun-loving father that I didn’t quite know what to say, so I tried, “Maybe it’ll still come.”

  “Maybe, but don’t hold your breath.” Father gave me a little smile and a wink and then closed the cigar box and tucked it into the space behind the piano.

  The next morning our parents left on the bus to the Haverhill Depot where they took a train to Boston. Jim, Ron and I ran the store and I thought about the box. I’d never known my father liked to write. I didn’t tell my brothers; it was a secret between Father and me. The Mystery of the Hidden Box.

  Early that evening I looked out the store window and saw my mother get off the bus — alone. She crossed the Square and walked briskly through the store.

  “Where’s Dad?” we asked together.

  “Your father’s dead,” she said without a tear.

  In disbelief we followed her to the kitchen where she told us they had been walking through the Park Street Subway Station in the midst of crowds of people when Father had fallen to the floor. A nurse bent over him, looked up at Mother and said simply, “He’s dead.”

  Mother had stood by him stunned, not knowing what to do as people tripped over him in their rush through the subway. A priest sa
id, “I’ll call the police,” and disappeared. Mother straddled Dad’s body for about an hour. Finally an ambulance came and took them both to the morgue where Mother had to go through his pockets and remove his watch. She’d come back on the train alone and then home on the local bus. Mother told us the shocking tale without shedding a tear. Not showing emotion had always been a matter of discipline and pride for her. We didn’t cry either and we took turns waiting on the customers.

  One steady patron asked, “Where’s the old man tonight?”

  “He’s dead,” I replied.

  “Oh, too bad,” and he left.

  I’d not thought of him as the old man, and I was mad at the question, but he was 70 and Mother was only 60. He’d always been healthy and happy and he’d cared for frail mother without complaining and now he was gone. No more whistling, no more singing hymns while stocking shelves. The “old man” was gone.

  On the morning of the funeral, I sat at the table in the store opening sympathy cards and pasting them in a scrapbook when I noticed the church magazine in the pile. Normally I would never have opened what I viewed as a dull religious publication, but just maybe that sacred article might be there and it was.

  I took the magazine to the little den, shut the door, and burst into tears. I’d been brave, but seeing Dad’s bold recommendations to the national convention in print was more than I could bear. I read and cried and then I read again. I pulled out the box from behind the piano and under the clippings I found a two-page letter to my father from Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., thanking him for his campaign suggestions.

  I didn’t tell anyone about my box. It remained a secret.

  ~Florence Littauer

  Encouragement

  It is never too late to be who you might have been.

  ~George Eliot

  Some of the greatest success stories of history have followed a word of encouragement or an act of confidence by a loved one or a trusted friend. Had it not been for a confident wife, Sophia, we might not have listed among the great names of literature the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne. When Nathaniel, a heartbroken man, went home to tell his wife that he was a failure and had been fired from his job in a customhouse, she surprised him with an exclamation of joy.