We Can Be Heroes...Part 1....Little Miggs

I made this music player at MyFlashFetish.com.


He who saves a single life saves the entire world. - The Talmud


On January 30 2007, At around 3:00PM, there was a car accident between 2 cars. It happened on the side walk at our complex.

Miguel was coming off the bus when he heard two car crashing on the side walk. he ran to see what had happened. when a lady was crying hysterical
because a man that was driving in the other car was unconscious and she thought he had died. so my son went to console her.

when the man regain consciousness, he told the lady don't worry he`s alive. the lady was shaken as she was trying to get her purse and Miguel picked up her purse and handed it to her. she had a dog and Miguel told her that if she wanted to he would take care of her dog until she came
out of the hospital, but she said no that someone was going to pick up the dog.

then the lady calmed down. at that moment the police was there and that`s when I came home from work and saw what had happened and checked to see if everyone was ok. I got scared. the first thing I thought was, oh no something happened to Miguel or another child as they were coming off the bus.

The lady was on a stretcher. I told Miguel that everyone was ok & you did a good job but he still wanted to help more. so I asked Miguel if he wanted to say good bye to her and he said yes. so he went and gave her a hug. she told him not to worry, that she was fine.

Miguel stayed with her through the whole ordeal, until the ambulance took her away. He responded and helped when no one else did. (There were many people around.)

R. V.


This letter is from Miguel's mother, detailing Miguel's heroic effort. The last line stood out the most to me:

"He responded and helped when no one else did. (There were many people around)."

We all have a hero inside of us. I truly believe that. I also believe that few of us believe it, and even fewer act on our heroic impulses....thinking, "No, not me. I'm no hero. Who am I to believe I can do anything?"

What we do in our lives is usually a fraction of what we could do, had we not been afraid to take action.

Miguel acted, when so many around him chose not to. He knew what the right thing to do was, and maybe he even doubted his ability to help, but had the courage to try anyway.

And if a child is capable of doing this, aren't we adults also capable? One reason we don't is that our unsuccessful attempts in the past have caused us to think that we can't do certain things. We tried, we failed, maybe even tried again, but failed again, and gave up before too many people found out and could call us a "loser".

If at first you don't succeed, QUIT! No sense being a fool about it.

I had this sign in college, because it was so funny. Sadly, way too many of us adhere to what is meant to be only a joke. And what we do with our lives is indeed a joke compared to everything we were capable of, had we maybe tried one more time, and even one more time after that.

If we never quit, we can never fail.

And as proof that being a hero is nothing more than choosing to act heroically in the challenging moments as they come into our lives, Miguel did not arrive this year as a courageous student. He had many failed attempts in class, and according to his parents, hadn't even tried to read at home for years.

It was so simple, even without knowing about his heroic effort from last January, I only had to look in his eyes and see his heart....see past the failures, and into the possibilities of his biggest self (see how small he is in the photo? - little guy in the middle - orange shirt).

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, or the abilities that are already there....that matter most.....it's the size of the fight in the dog...the size of your bloody heart!

And after a few months of struggle, challenge, and being urged to "hang on just one minute longer" and keep trying, his heroic effort has produced heroic results. If you've been following the writings, he is now a voracious reader at home. And, like "magic", here he's holding up a 100% and a 120% , two A PLUSSES! on this Friday's spelling and vocabulary tests!

How big do you think he feels now??????

If you have ever never given up on something UNTIL you got it, even just once, then you and I are capable of doing it again.

If you have ever never given up twice, then there is no doubt we can do it twice more....like how we never gave up trying to walk and talk UNTIL we got it....but then again, we hadn't learned how to be afraid, and no one around us was calling us losers when we didn't get it right away.....

But then again, life doesn't care about our excuses for not living fully, does it?

Thank you Miguel, and everyone in room 208, for showing me and every single person who reads this, that......

We can be heroes....just for one day (David Bowie)

...and for just one more day after that...