Chicken Soup for the Soul

[drix]

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sir i'v to how many branches of nat'l bookstore pero i was not lucky enuf coz wala na cla copy.

Hero_82 may i ask what web site i am goin to visit para maka kuha pud ko ug mga stories.

[hera_82]

@ drix, just go to:

www.chickensoup.com

then click on 'Free Daily Email'

[biggie9385]

@drix: yup subscribe didto sa ilaha site. i also subscribed on their daily email. After receiving it, I transfer it to a word document and formatted it so that later on, I can put the PDF file inside an ebook reader and my 6yr old daughter can read it there na. If its not violating the copyright law, I can share you the PDF (which I set to be print protected).

[Stephen Birao]

one of the best book by jack canfield jud..,

[biggie9385]

Please, Sign My Yearbook
by Stacy Brakebush

Sitting in class, I concentrated on the back of Brian’s neck. Evil thoughts filled my mind; I was secretly waiting for his head to explode. It didn’t, and I was forced to watch my ex-boyfriend laugh and chat with every person in the room while he blatantly ignored me.

After Brian and I broke up, third period became pure torture. While I was still nursing what I considered to be the world’s most broken heart, I was bombarded with the sight of my ex’s excessive flirting, as if he were proving to me that he was so obviously over his heartache. During class, Brian would gossip loudly about his weekend, his latest party and his new car.

Maybe Brian was trying to get back at me for breaking off our six-month relationship. Maybe he thought that if he looked happy, it would hurt me more than I had hurt him. At the end of the relationship, I let him cry on my shoulder but held a strong heart as he begged me not to go. Of course, he covered his pain very well at school, as if our tearful good-bye had never occurred.

Immediately after the breakup, Brian started dating another girl. She was graduating that spring, as if that were a big feat for a junior-year boy. She took him to the prom and announced it right beside me in math class. I, too, had a date for the prom, but it still hurt. My hurt curdled and turned to anger. It felt like he was trying to upset me, trying to rub his happiness in my face. Every time I saw them together, I wanted to scream. It felt like the pain was going to tear me in half, or at least force me to consider tearing her in half.

School was coming to an end, and I eagerly waited for summer vacation, my savior. No more Algebra Two and that gnawing feeling in my stomach each day.

One day in dreaded third period, Brian leaned over to me, and to my surprise, he asked me to sign his yearbook. I must have sat there for a full minute before I got over the shock and said yes.

I thought to myself, ‘This is my chance. I could really let him have it! I could tell him that I knew what he was doing, that he was trying to hurt me, and that it wasn’t fair. I could tell him that I saw through his act, that he and I both knew it was exactly that, an act.’ But then it hit me, what good would come of that? Would belittling him make me feel better, or would it just perpetuate the pain that we both needed to recover from?

Instead of writing of the pain I had endured, I listed all of the fun times we had shared. I wrote about the first place we had ever kissed, the gifts he had given me, the lessons I had learned - the ones he had taught me - and the first “I love you” that was whispered between us. It took up one page, and that quickly became two, until my hand was tired of writing. There were still a million more great memories crowding the corners of my mind, and I remembered many more throughout the day. It made me realize the things I learned from him and what great experiences we had shared. I finished by telling him I held no hard feelings, and I hoped he felt the same.

Maybe what I wrote in his yearbook made me look weak, maybe he thought I was pathetic for still holding onto the memories of our relationship. But writing all those things helped me; it helped me heal the wounds that still hurt in my heart. It felt liberating to let go of the grudge; I finally felt free from my anger.

I realized that Brian had taught me one final lesson: forgiveness. Someday, when he is fifty and has his own children, he may stumble upon his high school yearbook, and they will ask who Stacy was. I hope he can look back and say I was someone who really cared about him, loved him, and most importantly, that I was someone who taught him about forgiveness.

[biggie9385]

On Our Twentieth Wedding Anniversary
by Maggie Bedrosian

I smile when someone defines bigamy as having one spouse too many and monogamy as being the same thing. Instead, I think of marriage as a lifetime communication adventure. It has certainly been that with my husband, Marty.

Marty and I have been together for over twenty full, rich years.

He is, I would say with complete affection, just an ordinary kind of guy, in a very down-to-earth way. For instance, recently I told Marty I was thinking of taking up painting. He glanced at me, and without missing a beat, asked: "Semigloss or latex?"

That's Marty.

I remember in the months before our twentieth wedding anniversary, I began to think about our marriage and wonder if, indeed, it was all it should be. Nothing was wrong, mind you. But there just didn't seem to be any "newness" in our relationship anymore. I remembered the long-ago magic of being in a new relationship - the excitement of meeting someone you didn't know anything about and slowly discovering all the adorable details of his personality; the joy of finding out what you had in common; the first date, the first touch, the first kiss, the first snuggle, the first everything.

One morning, my well-worn husband and I were up early taking our customary walk of about four miles. Even though the scenery was beautiful, my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking about all the things that seemed to be missing after twenty years of marriage, and if, indeed, I was missing out on new things I should be experiencing. We had just reached the two-mile point in our walk, a shady spot where two cedar trees create a natural secluded archway above us. And as we were about to turn around, my husband reached over, took me in his arms and kissed me.

I was so busy thinking about all the "new" things I was missing out on, his kiss totally caught me by surprise.

And there in the middle of a hot, sticky, sweaty, exercise-panting kiss, I was suddenly flooded with an awareness of the cumulative gifts of twenty years of living with Marty. We had comforted each other through the deaths of three parents and two brothers. We had seen his son graduate from Virginia Tech. We had camped from Nova Scotia to the Canadian Rockies. We had shared songs with my family in Ireland one Fourth of July, and we had hiked along the Bay in Anchorage, Alaska. We had shared a lot of potatoes, a lot of surprises and a lot of life.

I did not have this special level of sharing with any other human being - only with my husband. And right now, we were sharing something new. A walk, a sweet, safe, comfortable companionship that offered new love each day, and a kiss that had never happened before and would never happen again. This moment was new, as each moment always would be.

That day, our twentieth anniversary took on a completely different meaning, one that has stayed with me every day since then - inside our oldest commitments can lie our newest celebrations.

[biggie9385]

The Price of a Dream
by Ricky C. Hunley

I grew up poor - living in the projects with six brothers, three sisters, a varying assortment of foster kids, my father, and a wonderful mother, Scarlette Hunley. We had little money and few worldly goods, but plenty of love and attention. I was happy and energetic. I understood that no matter how poor a person was, they could still afford a dream.

My dream was athletics. By the time I was sixteen, I could crush a baseball, throw a 90-mph fastball, and hit anything that moved on the football field. I was also lucky: my high school coach was Ollie Jarvis, who not only believed in me, but taught me how to believe in myself. He taught me the difference between having a dream and showing conviction. One particular incident with Coach Jarvis changed my life forever.

It was the summer between my junior and senior year, and a friend recommended me for a summer job. This meant a chance for money in my pocket - cash for dates with girls, certainly, money for a new bike and new clothes, and the start of savings for a house for my mother. The prospect of a summer job was enticing and I wanted to jump at the opportunity.

Then I realized I would have to give up summer baseball to handle the work schedule, and that meant I would have to tell Coach Jarvis I wouldn't be playing. I was dreading this, spurring myself with the advice my mother preached to us: "If you make your bed, you have to lie in it."

When I told Coach Jarvis, he was as mad as I expected him to be.

"You have your whole life to work," he said. "Your playing days are limited. You can't afford to waste them."

I stood before him with my head hanging, trying to think of the words that would explain to him why my dream of buying my mom a house and having money in my pocket was worth facing his disappointment in me.

"How much are you going to make at this job, son?" he demanded.

"Three twenty-five an hour," I replied.

"Well," he asked, "is $3.25 an hour the price of a dream?"

That question, the plainness of it, laid bare for me the difference between wanting something right now and having a goal. I dedicated myself to sports that summer, and within the year I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates to play rookie-league ball and offered a $20,000 contract. I already had an offer for a football scholarship to the University of Arizona, which led me to an education, two consensus selections as All-American linebacker, and being chosen seventh overall in the first round of the NFL draft. I signed with the Denver Broncos in 1984 for $1.7 million, and bought my mother the house of my dreams.

[Bentleys]

Tinolang Manok.
Karina Higgins

My mom can’t cook. She certainly can’t cook Filipino food. My experiences of Filipino food were through other members of our family or the “Y’ayas” and the “Titas”. The Y’aya is equivalent to the American version of a nanny, except they often stay and transition with the family until they are older. Tita is a term for auntie, although they are not always related. These ladies were in charge of not only the household, but the heart of the home, the kitchen. Their meals were often dishes they had brought with them from the homeland i.e. Adobo and Sinigang. They adjusted certain cooking methods and substituted ingredients when need be. They even learned new recipes, hamburgers and pancakes, but they always had their specialities and we had our favorites. One of my favorites, especially during the chilly months, was and still is chicken Tinola. Tinola is the perfect remedy for a cold or just a cold day. It is fragrant soup served with chicken and chunks of papaya or chayote ( I prefer the pear shaped, fruit like plant). Mulunggay leaves are added for its legendary health benefits, along with garlic, onions, ginger and patis aka fish sauce. The broth is full bodied and soothing with a hint of heat. It’s a tasty cure.

[giraffemeister]

I had one of their book once. When I stayed in Iloilo my mother told me to give it to my tita, pang thank you daw. Huhuhu I miss it na

[janjan2010]

lingaw man sad diay ni storya sa sabaw sa manok