My wife and son were on the way to school this morning when something profound happened. They were listening to the radio and one of the DJ’s on the morning show was talking about a handicapped man that lives on his own. They said that he was unable to pay his heating bill, and the station was taking donations to cover the expenses.<\/p>\n
It was at this moment that something remarkable occurred.<\/p>\n
“I remember when we didn’t have heat and it was really cold,” my son spoke out from the back seat. He was referring to a time last winter when either the pilot light had blown out or the heat had been turned off and the house got extremely cold in the morning.<\/p>\n
“Why doesn’t he just have his mommy come wrap him up in a blanket and bring him his breakfast?” he continued.<\/p>\n
My wife smiled and gave him the obvious response. “He doesn’t have a mommy to take care of him. He lives all alone.”<\/p>\n
My son thought about it for a minute and then he said, “I think we should take some of my presents back to the store so we can give him some money.”<\/p>\n
My wife was at a loss for words. She just looked at him in the rearview mirror. Before she could recover he began again.<\/p>\n
“I think we should also tell Santa to take my presents and give them to him so he has something to play with.”<\/p>\n
At this time, my wife started to cry, as did I when she relayed the story to me over the phone later in the afternoon. With tears in her eyes, she dropped him off at school and drove to work. She couldn’t get over what it meant to Avery to be willing to give up his presents. This is a kid that loves<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0Christmas and values his possessions immensely. And with no prodding whatsoever, he was ready to give them up for a man he’d never met and would never know.<\/p>\n I’ve never been so proud of my son in my entire life.<\/p>\n My wife sent the radio station an e-mail to tell them about Avery’s sacrifice. They informed her that the man’s bills had been paid, but that they may read the letter tomorrow on the air during the morning show. So if any of you listen to 106.5 The Wolf<\/a> in Kansas City, tune in tomorrow morning. You can even listen live online<\/a>.<\/p>\n UPDATE: To the best of my wife’s knowledge, they did not say anything on the show after 6:45 (which is when I was able to crawl out of bed and start recording). If they said something before then, I don’t care, because no sane person is up that early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My wife and son were on the way to school this morning when something profound happened. They were listening to the radio and one of the DJ’s on the morning show was talking about a handicapped man that lives on his own. They said that he was unable to pay his heating bill, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3760,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/bodily-playmate\/","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":0},"title":"Bodily Playmate","author":"Jared Cash","date":"December 26, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"My wife and I were watching Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime. There's a scene near the end of the series where Jack and another character are heading to a meeting on [critical plot point]: Me: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153His girlfriend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gonna be in that meeting.\" Wife (after a brief pause): \"His 'bodily playmate'.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "A Day in the Life"","block_context":{"text":"A Day in the Life","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4618,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/4618\/","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":1},"title":"Hold my peas","author":"Jared Cash","date":"June 11, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, my wife decided to have an emergency appendectomy. Okay, \"decided\" isn't really the right word. And technically, the appendectomy was this week, but the whole ordeal started last week. It's a long story, but that's not what I'm here to tell you about today. 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The boys came up Friday to spend the night with Grandma & Grandpa, just the two of them. Autumn and I came up yesterday, amidst the first fall storm. The clouds parted as we approached Troy and the sun came out.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "A Day in the Life"","block_context":{"text":"A Day in the Life","link":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2678,"url":"https:\/\/zepfhyr.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/first-day-of-fall\/","url_meta":{"origin":710,"position":3},"title":"First Day of Fall","author":"Jared Cash","date":"August 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a tradition in my household. It started about 7 years ago, when my cousin (Andrew), my wife (Autumn), and I first discovered O'Fallon's Pumpkin Beer. It's an ale, brewed up with all the spices and flavors you'd expect of a pumpkin pie. 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