The Secret of Life...
Once, for the program at the Hole in
the Wall Gang Camp gala, some volunteer counselors contributed short passages
about their experiences at camp, and Alice wrote about one of the campers, a
sunny little girl she called L. At camp,
Alice had a tendency to gravitate toward the child who needed the most help,
and L. was one of those. "Last summer, the camper I got closest to, L.,
was a magical child who was severely disabled, " Alice wrote. "She had two genetic diseases, one which
kept her from growing and one which kept her from digesting any food. She had to be fed through a tube at night and
she had so much difficulty walking that I drove her around in a golf cart a
lot....One day, when we were playing duck-duck-goose, I was sitting behind her
and she asked me to hold her mail for her while she took her turn to be chased
around the circle. It took her a while
to make the curcuit, and I had time to see that on top of the pile was a note
from her mom. Then I did something truly
awful, which I'm reluctant now to reveal.
I decided to read that note. I
simply had to know what this child's parents could have done to make her so
spectacular, to make her the most optimistic, most enthusiastic, most hopeful
human being I had ever encountered. I
snuck a quick look at the note, and my eyes fell on this sentence: 'If God had
given us all the children in the world to choose from, L., we would only have
chose you.' Before L. got back to her place in the circle, I showed the note to
Bud, who was sitting next to me. 'Quick.
Read this,' I whispered. 'It's the secret of life.'
Calvin Trillen, Alice, Off Page
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