Once There Was a Little Girl

The little girl was small for her age. Too small, some of the kids on the playground at school said.

“HaHa! You’re just a little shrimp,” they yelled to her in kindergarten. It hurt her feelings, but her mom said, “If you make a joke of it, and they see that it doesn’t bother you, they’ll stop.”

So, the little girl joked back at the taunters. ”Haha! you’re just a big whale.” Soon, the teasing  stopped.

Her mother was deeply moved by the story because she knew what it felt like to be teased. She explained how hurtful this was to treat others that way.

 “If only we can be kind and not return meanness with anger,” she said. When she was little, bullies mocked her, when she wore her thick glasses to school. “Eww, hello, four eyes, what’s wrong with you? Why you’re so pale, you could pass for a ghost.” Hehe. Some even knocked her glasses off her face as she ran home from school.

The little girl realized that teasing and bullying did not fit at all with what she was learning in Sunday School, and it bothered her a lot. She began to notice more and more when other kids were bullied. She didn’t like it.

On the first day of first grade she went out on the playground and saw circles of kids chanting. She discovered that they were mocking the special education kids who had classes in bungalows on the campus. She ran to an adult playground monitor and told her what was happening.

The woman snapped, “Don’t be a tattle tale!” The woman turned her back and walked away. The little girl went home from school very upset and told her mother.  What she didn’t know was that another little girl, Arleta, was very upset too. And she told her mom. Arleta’s mom called the principal.

He said, “I’m so sorry but we can’t do anything about it because no blood has been spilled.” Arleta’s mom told Arleta.

Meanwhile, Stacey’s mom said to Stacey, “Take each of the kids aside who were joining in as followers and tell them that this could happen to them if they got hit hard on the head. Ask them, ‘How would you feel?

Fearless, the next day Stacey took kids aside one by one and started talking to them about this. Meanwhile Arleta was the tallest girl on the playground and Stacey was the smallest. Arleta waded into the circles and started punching the leaders hard. Soon all the bullies had bloody noses. That’s when Stacey and Arleta’s eyes met and they have been kindred spirits ever since.

As time passed, the little girl, Stacey, became well liked because she was not only a good student, but was kind and friendly to everyone. She even made sure that the unpopular kids were included in her circle. Even the poor girl who wore hand-me-down clothes too big for her felt welcome among the little girl’s friends.

Stacey and her sister loved to read. So, one day their mom, Annie, went to the bookmobile outside of school to hand in a big stack of books. 

“Oh, my! Are you Stacey’s mother?” the librarian said.

“Uh, yes I am” Uh-oh, her mother worried. Has she done something wrong?

The librarian said, “You know there’s not enough supervision out there on the playground and the mentally handicapped kids are out there at the same time with the regular students. Those poor children are mocked and called MR’s (mentally retarded) by the bigger bullies. Little Stacey and her best friend Arleta single handedly took each bully aside and talked to them. I don’t know exactly what they said, but the bullying has stopped.”

All the way through school Arleta and Stacey kept the bullies in line.

Years passed as the little girl continued loving animals and loving to read.  She and her family were musicians and sang a lot professionally. So, Stacey wasn’t sure what she wanted to study in college.

But Mrs. T, who had raised Annie, had taught her when she was six. “Annie, did you know that you can be anything in this world that you want to be if you are just willing to work hard enough to get there?”

Annie remembered those words all of her life. She knew that if you combine that persistence and God’s direction the opportunities are endless.

So, as her two daughters, Stacey, and Gloria, were growing up, this was always on the refrigerator door:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.  (Calvin Coolidge, 30^th President of the United States 1872-1933.

With Stacey’s love of animals and trusting in her belief in God, Stacey chose to major in Biology.  She had an opportunity to rescue a four-day old, injured owl when no one else could give the time to feed him every two hours.

Some of you already know this part of the story. Wesley The Owl lived to be 19 years old and Stacey wrote his story which became a NYTimes and International best seller. Her mom went on to write her story, That One Person, by Annie Farris, the true story of how the kindness of just one person can change a life for the better.

But Stacey’s book and many accomplishments are not her mother’s fondest memory. Annie’s proudest moment is knowing that Stacey and Arleta  had the courage, with their compassionate hearts, and with no concern for the consequences, to single handedly stop the bullying not only in first grade but all the way through school.

As an adult, Arleta with her sense of justice, went to law school and founded a private detective company in Arizona. Stacey still works with animals and continues to write.

 

To learn more about these two published author’s true stories, Stacey O’Brien and her mom, Annie Farris, please click the links below:

Wesley the Owl, by Stacey O’Brien