Yesterday, on one of my wife’s favorite soap operas, Neil had just died and they were having a funeral for him. All the characters did an excellent job talking about his life. They talked about how much he had done for everyone and how everyone wanted to thank him but didn’t get a chance to. It was so realistic that it got me thinking about what I am most thankful for. I remember Oprah Winfrey’s “Favorite Things.” These two concepts is what this True Story is about.
If I had to rate all of my trials and tribulations against all of my many blessings, the blessings would outnumber the trials and tribulations three to one. To figure out my top favorite gifts I went back to my notebooks to find each and every “Counting My Blessings” note that I ever made. I really suggest to you, as I have to my children, that you write down your own blessings every day in a diary, notebook, or on a memo pad. It helps you put your trials and tribulations of life into perspective.
My blessings often came in the form of thoughtful gifts from my children and my wife. There is a big difference between a gift and a thoughtful gift. Anyone can buy a gift. A well thought out gift is, to my mind, a gift that will bring you to happiness, tears of joy, and appreciation. Some of my blessings are things that came from unexpected sources like the government or even from strangers. I have many more “favorite gift” stories to tell you about. What follows are not in order of appreciation but I have narrowed the stories down to the six most-appreciated gifts.
Gift # 1
I often say that in my seven and a half years I had to spend in the orphanage was difficult for me. This is true but, remember, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The orphanage did make me stronger. This gift #1 was given to me by a policeman when I was only seven and a half years old. I had been a street child in Downtown Indianapolis for over two years and, even though I didn’t think so at the time, Indianapolis was a very dangerous place for a street kid. I had often been beaten up by bigger kids, chased by adult men with bad intentions and, of course, chased by the police. I was actually sexually molested once by a man who cornered me in a dark downtown alley. I didn’t understand what was happening to me until I grew up. It was only a matter of time before something worse was going to happen to me. At the time I was ignorant of that fact, of course. I was just trying to survive. In my time as a street kid, I had been stopped by adults and several policemen. I always managed to talk my way out of it. Any idiot could see there could be no good reason for a kid my age to be in the situation I was in. They didn’t care enough to check out my lies. One time, I was actually told to just go home by a couple at a bus stop, they gave me a dollar and got on the bus. I had no home to go to. One day, I had just found a tricycle (…ok, I had just stolen a tricycle) from an old tenement building doorway in Downtown Indy. It was a big rusty old tricycle with no seat. As fast as I could, I wheeled away.
I ended up trying to cross Market Street which was very close Monument Circle. It was during a very busy afternoon. There was a policeman at the intersection, directing traffic. He saw me, stopped all the cars and snatched me off the tricycle. At first, I thought he found out that I stole it and I was really scared. Of course, I went into my act and started crying and trying to talk him down. Poor, pitiful me. “I just want to go home, sir. I live close by.” Just let me go home to my mamma! I figured out right away he didn’t know about the tricycle. This lie and the crying always worked, along with, “Please don’t tell my Mamma because she will beat me.”
Here comes the “gift” I was given… For the first time in my young life I had been fortunate enough to encounter a civil servant that cared about his job! Someone who would do the right thing to keep me safe. He thought about it, called in a buddy to direct traffic and said to me. “Let’s go talk to your Mamma.” Well, I screamed, yelled, broke loose from his grip, kicked him in the leg, and started to run like the devil. He caught me and the rest is history. He took the time to notify authorities who handle lost children when we got to the police station. He found me a chocolate ice cream bar and stuck around until they figured out that I actually had no home. I had shown him where my mother used to live but she no longer lived there. I honestly didn’t know my last name at the time. The only way they found out my last name was the landlord of the tenement building remembered my mother’s last name.
They had no other option. The next week this little, angry, wild kid was thrown into a jail called The Orphanage. I now realize the “gift” this policeman gave me. He did his job. He saved me from being raped, drugged and/or beaten to death by just doing his job. Many other policemen had failed to do their jobs but not him! I would love to find him and thank him for saving my life. If he had not done his job, I might not be here to write this True Story today. In fact, I am sure of it. I remember telling this True Story to my three daughters and ended it with asking them to be like that policeman. I told them to strive to do the right thing every time, all the time and always! Be like the policeman that saved me. We should all be like him, right?
Gift # 2
This is a shorter True Story than the one I told above. I joined the military because I was hungry. I didn’t sign up because I wanted to “serve my country.” I was a little over seventeen years old and ignorant about almost everything in the real world. I can’t imagine what trouble I would have gotten into if it weren’t for me joining the US Marine Corps. My Gift #2 was given to me by the Vietnam War (which, by the way, was never a “war”… it was a “police action”). The French fought to save South Vietnam for years and gave up. Then, America, in its infinite wisdom, went in to fill the gap! No “war” was ever declared. This happened under President Kennedy. So, what was my “Gift” from the The Vietnam (so-called) War, you ask? Here it is! …By a stroke of sheer luck, our government adjusted the GI Bill that allowed all veterans to go to college absolutely free and I ended up with something I always dreamed of… a college education. The details of my journey through those years are for another True Story but this Gift #2 improved my life beyond belief. I feel sooo blessed!
Gift #3
Some gifts don’t come in a box. My eldest daughter, Dawn, has always had an uncanny ability to pick just the right gifts for the family.
I have no such ability since, typically, I have not been a material person (like Madonna). I am more of an appreciator of what you do rather than getting gifts you buy. Dawn knew I loved astronomy. One year on my birthday, Dawn gave me two beautifully framed pictures of the stars from the Hubble telescope for my office wall. She had them specially framed! They still hang there. I love those pictures and the thought behind them. The next year, without warning, Dawn and her husband, Bill, came to my birthday party. We had just built our new home in a wonderful housing addition called Big Run. The house was a 3-bedroom brick home with a nice yard on a beautiful cul-de-sac. Outside our patio door we had a 15’ by 15’ concrete slab. Dawn and Bill informed us that they had decided to give us a special present that year. They were going to build us a pergola to cover our patio. We had talked about one the week before, but they knew, after building the house, that we had very little money left. They built us the most wonderful pergola you ever saw. It took them a while to build and they did it all by themselves. We have spent 15 years under that pergola. We’ve had countless friends and family get-togethers under it. Every time I sit under it I think of them. I can’t tell you how proud we were, and still are, of Dawn and Bill. We love our pergola! I hope your children are reading this True Story!
Yes, I do feel sooo blessed.
Gift # 4
I started singing in Mrs. Her’s music class and the Boys Chorus in grade school. I always loved attention and I seemed to get more of it when I sang than anything else that I ever did. I grew up, went into the military and married Paula. We moved to Kalamazoo. It was while I was working for Industrial Nucleonics in Kalamazoo, Michigan that I got a special present from my Paula for my birthday. On June 24th, my wife gifted me with a brand new Alvarez guitar and a lot of music books with lyrics and guitar chords. Most of the books had maybe 5 percent of the songs in them that I actually knew or liked to sing but I thought that was such a great gift set. I loved to sing and the guitar kept me on key. We drove to Indy almost every other weekend to visit our families. I played and sang a lot after that. But that isn’t the Gift #4 of this True Story. The real gift came at Christmas. From June to Christmas my wonderful wife had been figuring out which songs I wanted to sing and began typing the words out on sheets of heavy paper. There weren’t any PC’s back then. Many of the songs she had to listen to, from LP records we had collected, in order to put the words on paper. She went through all of my many music books and handpicked the songs I liked and put those down on paper also. It took so much time and effort and I had no idea she was doing it for me. There wasn’t any karaoke in those days and this effort was absolutely astonishing. She put all the songs in two large 4” deep 3-ring binders and the song sheets filled up both of them. Can you imagine? I cried tears of joy and appreciation for the work she did. It was a total of several hundred songs. I still have those binders to this day and I can sing over 1,000+ songs now. It all started with those wonderful 3-ring binders. What a Gift that was! I will cherish those 3-ring binders till the day I die.
I feel sooo blessed!
Gift # 5
My youngest Daughter Amanda was maybe 12 or 13. I was working as a Computer Consultant for Decision Data at the time. We had just built our new two story home in Far Hill Downs subdivision on Citation Circle.
My other daughter, Denise, was taking piano lessons as well as Amanda. Amanda, however, was really into Classical music. She liked Mozart and Wagner type of music even though we never played it at our home. We have no idea where she found the knowledge or skill set but she took to the piano like a duck takes to water. She only listened to Classical music and she became a brilliant piano player and still is. One day, she asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I thought about it for days. My favorite song at the time was Stand By Me by Ben E. King. I just loved the song and this was before the movie came out. I loved the piano part of the song a lot. I answered her question a few days later. It was a sunny April day and I knew my birthday was more than 3 months away. She would have plenty of time to get my present. I told her all I wanted was to have her play my favorite song in the whole world on my birthday! I wanted her to play Stand By Me for my birthday on the piano! There turned out to be a problem I never expected though. Amanda said she couldn’t honor my request because she never plays anything on the piano but Classical music. I was so disappointed. She wouldn’t play popular music for anybody. Popular music just wasn’t her thing, I guess. I never talked about it again and I figured she would get me a new tie or some guitar picks and that was okay.
When my birthday came around I did get a new tie and a small box of guitar picks. Later in the day, we went out on the front porch and in the background we heard the most beautiful rendition of Stand By Me that I had ever heard and it was being played by Amanda on our piano. We all rushed into the living room which was just behind where we we sitting and I was crying like a little baby the way I am crying now, I can hardly see the computer screen. Okay, I just took a short break to pull myself together and now I have to correct all the errors because of my blurry eyes. You would think as many times as I have told this story, it would get easier, huh? I am such a wuss!
I feel sooo blessed!
Gift # 6
This is not the last True Story about great Gifts that I have received. I have many more which I will insert into some of the other True Stories I plan to write for you. This Gift was initiated by my middle daughter, Denise, when she was maybe 30 years of age. In my efforts to be a good father to my daughters I often offer them “words of wisdom” that I had picked up over the years like “Life is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re going to get,” from the movie Forrest Gump. Some of what I told them I actually wrote myself and later became part of my poems. I told the girls these little tidbits of knowledge over and over for years (and I am sure it irritated them to death at times). Well, one Christmas season, Denise convinced the other two girls to help her on a project. She wanted to put together a book of all of those tidbits of wisdom that I drove into them so many times when they were young. They called the book “Memories” and proudly presented it to me at Christmas. It had a nice brown suede leather front and back. On the front it had “Memories” emblazoned on it. It had a little clamp to hold it together. It looked like a professional book binder had created it. You have to understand that I always assumed everything I told them went in one ear and out the other. Every once in a while though, at family get-togethers, I overheard them repeat a few of my infamous tidbits to their own children. I opened the book up and it was full of almost everything I ever remembered telling them when they were young. It had cartoons and wording that was absolutely descriptive of my words. I teared up again and this little book became a part of my life to this day. Finally, I felt that my children really appreciated me, understood me, and honored my attempts to make them better young ladies in every way.
I feel sooo blessed!
Note: I am writing this blog (soon to a book) because I think the True Stories of my trials, tribulations, failures, and successes could make a difference to at least one person. My wonderful social worker, James Thurston, did this for me so many years ago. I have always tried so hard to “Pay it Forward” to honor this wonderful man who saved my soul. I remember the policeman saved me from the streets and the young doctor who also saved my life when I was only three years old. I’ve always considered myself as a “Miracle Child” for my good luck. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. As I write more True Stories, you will see some examples of me trying to “Pay it Forward” in their honor. You only have to help one person to be a success but it’s okay to help more than one. In a way, this whole blog (soon to be a book) is a tribute to the three good men that made me who I am today, Mr. James Thurston, the policeman, and the young doctor. May they all rest in peace knowing I am doing my part at last.
I guess it is finally time to tell you my famous “French’s Mustard Story.” It is my three daughters’ favorite story! Stand by… Story #13 is coming up!
Roy Lee Barrett
Click to go to the next True Story, “The French’s Mustard Story”
Roy Lee Unchained 