Every Sunday morning I take a light jog around a park near my home. There’s a lake located in one corner of the park. Each time I jog by this lake, I see the same elderly woman sitting at the water’s edge with a small metal cage sitting beside her.

This past Sunday my curiosity got the best of me, so I stopped jogging and walked over to her. As I got closer, I realized that the metal cage was in fact a small trap. There were three turtles, unharmed, slowly walking around the base of the trap. She had a fourth turtle in her lap that she was carefully scrubbing with a spongy brush.

“Hello,” I said. “I see you here every Sunday morning. If you don’t mind my nosiness, I’d love to know what you’re doing with these turtles.”

She smiled. “I’m cleaning off their shells,” she replied. “Anything on a turtle’s shell, like algae or scum, reduces the turtle’s ability to absorb heat and impedes its ability to swim. It can also corrode and weaken the shell over time.”

“Wow! That’s really nice of you!” I exclaimed.

She went on: “I spend a couple of hours each Sunday morning, relaxing by this lake and helping these little guys out. It’s my own strange way of making a difference.”

“But don’t most freshwater turtles live their whole lives with algae and scum hanging from their shells?” I asked.

“Yep, sadly, they do,” she replied.

I scratched my head. “Well then, don’t you think your time could be better spent? I mean, I think your efforts are kind and all, but there are fresh water turtles living in lakes all around the world. And 99% of these turtles don’t have kind people like you to help them clean off their shells. So, no offense… but how exactly are your localized efforts here truly making a difference?”

The woman giggled aloud. She then looked down at the turtle in her lap, scrubbed off the last piece of algae from its shell, and said, “Sweetie, if this little guy could talk, he’d tell you I just made all the difference in the world.”

It has come to the staff’s attention that this story is copied from another source. We do not typically encourage the use copywritten material. We want unique content from ordanary people 🙂

We have found the author to be Marc Chernoff http://www.marcandangel.com/2009/02/25/how-to-make-all-the-difference-in-the-world/

My first crush occurred when I was nine years old. In fourth grade I sat beside Patti, the prettiest girl in the class. She was smart and talented and popular and funny and charming.

One day, the teacher assigned an exercise which tested our abilities to compose a letter. After they were graded and edited accordingly, we sent them off to a Chamber of Commerce of our choice, asking for information about their town. I chose Tuscon, Arizona.

When the return mail started coming in from all over the country, everyone had such fun opening and sharing their treasures with the class. Most of the envelopes contained pamphlets describing the location and the city’s unique qualities. Finally, I received my package which was bigger than the others. Inside were all kinds of goodies including stamps, pens, literature, maps and pictures.

This was my chance. I decided to share some of my things with Patti. I nervously reached across the aisle to give her some stamps and dropped a few on the floor. The teacher asked with annoyance, ‘what is going on there?’. I turned red and couldn’t think of anything to say, but Patti jumped in and bailed me out. ‘He was sharing some stamps with me’, she calmly replied.

Hmmmm … ‘honesty’, why didn’t I think of that. The teacher, with a knowing smile, let me off the hook and continued addressinclass. Patti and I eventually became good friends (did I mention how pretty she was?)

Our family moved away that winter and I never saw Patti again, but somewhere I read that she had become the homecoming queen and valedictorian of her senior class . Ten years have passed since our ‘stamp’ episode, but I think of it once in a while.

It’s nice to be able to look her in her in her eyes as she lays next to me, she is now my wife and mother of my children.

It was a week before Christmas we hadn’t put up any decor at all because we didn’t have any! We were a brand new married couple,with a one year old and our jobs weren’t great. I had been stressing all week about trying to make this Christmas a special one for my family, but how all my money went to bills. So I asked for extra hours but the boss said no, I tried everything nothing was working. I told my wife we can only buy our son a couple presents and that that doesn’t include the Christmas tree! She asked,”Not even a Christmas tree?” With pain in her eyes. I said sadly,”no.”

I went to work the next day thinking about how to get a tree for my wife and son until my friend came up and asked me, “can you help me this weekend with planting some orange trees, I’ll pay you.” I replied,”Yeah sure I need the money.”

So I went to his house helped him plant the orange trees and waited for my pay, he came to me with a weird look on his face he said he couldn’t pay me, that his bank messed up his account. I replied,”What! I needed that money!”

He went to the back of his truck and pulled out a baby orange tree and said,”Here, take this tree it’s all I can do right now.” I thought, what am I gonna do with this, so I went home with this tiny orange tree and some old family tree decorations I found in storage. My wife asked about it and I told her what happened.

Christmas Eve came around and my wife and I started arguing about not having money or even a tree. While we were arguing, my one year old was crawling around and playing with the decorations I got out of storage. We stopped arguing to watch him. Then all the sudden he crawled over to that tiny orange tree and threw the decorations at it, that’s when my wife and I got an idea, our baby was telling us something!  We could decorate the orange tree for Christmas.  So we got those old ornaments and threw them on there!

Although we can afford Christmas trees now, our true family tradition is still decorating a tiny orange tree. It always reminds us we don’t need Christmas decor or fancy presents, just our family is enough.