See Also:
Beginning of a FAMOUS Hero: The Diego Rivera Story.
Life Lesson #86 – Notice The Big Picture.
Mr. Johnson, the principal at Riverside Elementary School came on the intercom and said, “May I have your attention, please? If anyone knows who vandalized the wall in the 4th grade wing, I would appreciate your coming and telling me.”
Well, sure enough, somebody had taken a red marker and messed up what had been a beautiful scene painted on the wall. The two boys who did it thought they were doing something funny. They also thought no one was watching. But they were wrong.
Some 5th grade girls who stayed late on Thursdays for gymnastics were in the building. One of them saw everything and she did exactly what she should have done. She told her parents about it when she got home. Her dad called Mr. Johnson the next day, and the kids who did it were called in and punished.
Mrs. McHenry, the artist who originally painted the scene on the wall was called in to fix the damage. But now the problem was deciding how to pay Mrs. McHenry for fixing the painting. Well, the two boys’ parents would have to do that. So now the boys’ parents were mad at their sons for embarrassing them and for costing them money. The whole school was mad at the boys for messing up the nice wall in the first place, and the boys were mad at themselves because now they had to do extra work to pay back their parents. What a mess!
It would have been so much better if the boys had done something HELPFUL instead of something hurtful. They could have been HEROES instead!
– Jim Lord