Dylan Waidelich
Dolmatz
College Writing
30 September 2006
Making a Difference
Every morning my mother asks me the same question, “How are you going to make someone smile today Dylan?”
“I don’t know; tell a dumb joke.” I say as I’m running out the door so that I’m not late getting to school. Have you ever stopped and wondered if you really are making a difference in someone’s life? I never did until I made a call to see how my friend Kim was doing when she wasn’t e-mailing back.
I got one of those feelings that something was wrong when Kim didn’t reply to my e-mails that I had sent her that day. So I went ahead and gave her a call just to make sure that she was ok. I called her and got no answer; so I went ahead and just left a message saying, “Kim I hope that you are doing ok, you haven’t e-mailed me back in over three days. What’s going on? I’m really worried about you. Please give me a call back and just let me know that you are ok.”
Late that night she called me back and asked if I could go get a cup of coffee with her because she needed to talk. So when I went and met her at Starbucks, she was already there, waiting for me. When we sat down she started crying, and I asked her why was she crying. She told me that her mom had decided to move without talking to her so she had to miss school to get packed. She then told me that I was the only person that called her to see what was going on, just because I cared about her and that it was really meaningful to her.
It feels good to make a difference in someone’s life I told myself. So every morning just take a few minutes to ask yourself, how am I going to make someone smile today? Because you never know when you’re going to make a difference in someone’s life.
