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A certain man - hardly known even in his home country - comes to mind. A man nicknamed The boxer of Auschwitz, “He who beat the Germans as he wished” by his companions, and Weiss Nebel (“The White Fog”) by his Nazi overseers.A man who was, in fact, one of the first people ever deported to Auschwitz, being attributed the number 77 amongst his fellow inmates, but who yet survived in the camps all the way until the end of the Second World War thanks to his martial skills.The man whom I’m speaking of is the former Polish bantamweight and Auschwitz multi-weight unified champion, soldier, member of underground resistance movements and hero in his own right, Tadeusz Pietrzykowski.Let me tell you his story.Background, and the Second World WarTadeusz was born in 1917, in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland, fifth out of seven siblings. Both his parents had a higher education, which was very rare for these times - his father was even an engineer - and insisted on their children being raised well.Tadeusz had a natural artistic talent. After watching the famous movie “Ben Hur” as a 9-year-old kid, he drew a warrior charging on a chariot as a homework for his plastic arts class, and did it so well his teacher asked him to draw it again in front of him as he suspected the homework had been made by an adult artist. As a teen, he would make ends meet by drawing for people who were in Warsaw’s academy of fine arts and in architecture colleges. Tadeusz was very talented at school, too.His father died when he was ten, and his family’s financial situation rapidly deteriorated. Tadeusz joined a military school, where he first started boxing, and slowly drifted away from pursuing studies, much to his mother dismay. At age 16, he joined the biggest Warsaw sports’ club, Legia Warszawa, and had his first professional fight a year later. Yet, he was still going to school, and could not fight under his real name in the light of the Polish law; he was therefore nicknamed “Teddy” by his trainer, Feliks Stamm – the man who’s considered the father of Polish boxing, having trained a generation of Olympic level fighters.“Teddy” fought over 50 times during his short-lived career, winning most of his fights, several tournaments and attracting great interest of Polish sport journalists after becoming Warsaw’s bantamweight’s (52–53kg / 114–116 lbs) division champion in 1937 following very skillful displays on the ring; they even started referring to him as “Teddy Iron-Fist”.It all ended when World War II started, 1st September 1939. His club’s authorities had previously started procedures to prevent him from being drafted due to his promising boxing talents, but Tadeusz took none of it and volunteered to Warsaw’s first defence unit. And there he took arms and fought until the capitulation of Warsaw, 28th September of 1939, defending the Ochota district, next to where he grew up.Tadeusz was not deterred by Warsaw’s fall, which just lead to the creation of underground resistance movements. The 1st October 1939, at a secret military meeting under a monument to Jan III Sobieski - former king and Polish national military hero - he swore an oath in the presence of a chaplain and several Polish officers; that he “would fight until the very end, until the defeat of the Germans”.From there on he had two choices; either fight in Poland with the various existing resistance units, or to try to get to the West, where he could battle as a pilot, having received an adequate training before WWII in the military academy he attended during his teenage years.In early February 1940, he took his decision; he decided he would to go to France to join to the local rebirthing Polish army. Blending himself in the crowds of the cities he passed through by wearing a hat and feigning to read German newspapers, he crossed all of Poland, Czech Republic, but his luck eventually ran out and at the end of the month he was caught in Hungary by the local police and arrested.He was then deported back to Poland, to the already very filled prison of Tarnów south of the country, where he was interrogated, tortured and starved with hundreds of other Polish prisoners for about 4 months, until June 1940. The conditions there were hard enough for the inmates to dream of being sent to German hard labor camps. During the repeated beatings, Tadeusz would hide his knowledge of German so that he could have a little bit more time to think before answering questions while the translator formulated the German interrogators’ questions in Polish.The inmates of the prison all thought that they were indeed going to do hard labor in Germany, but the day before their departure they learned via Morse communication on the prison’s pipes that they would be sent somewhere else.Arriving to KL AuschwitzThe Tarnów prisoners were put on a train the 14th June 1940 and deported directly to the concentration camp, which was itself located in a relatively remote area - yet had a functional railway.The first Auschwitz convoy, made of 727 prisoners from Tarów’s prisonThis was the first convoy ever sent to Auschwitz, safe for a very small group which arrived earlier, consisting of 30 German criminals who would all become the camp’s early kapos – prisoners serving as underlings of the SS, who were guaranteed an advantageous material situation and who were responsible for disciplining the other inmates, acting as lawless overseers.Thus, the first Polish prisoner received the number 31. Tadeusz became the n°77 - out of the 202 499 numbers in total that would be chronologically given to the males having worked in the camp for the duration of the war. And thus the nightmare begun.To their very unpleasant surprise, the prisoners were not made to work physically right after coming to the camp. The first two weeks after the convoy’s arrival - a period called the Quarantine - were instead dedicated to break the inmates’ bodies and spirits. During the Quarantine, prisoners were forced to perform exhausting physical tasks - often senseless ones - under the harsh supervision of the camp’s overseers.The prisoners would stay out all day under the burning summer sun in an open space and do what they were asked; crawl, jump up and get down, walk around with their hands touching their feet, take heavy bags from one place to another just to take them back to their starting spot, and so on, all day. During the breaks in between the exercises, prisoners were taught German songs and basic commands.If somebody made a mistake during the singing or when repeating sentences in German, he would be brutally beaten up. Whenever the SS men grew bored of the exercises, they amused themselves with the prisoners - at their expense. This included beatings, forcing catholic priests and Jews to say loud prayers while standing on barrels, or having the inmates do even more absurd tasks - such as plucking grass with their mouths around the camp.Of course, all of this was performed by people who were abused in prison for several months prior to their arrival to Auschwitz, and therefore it’s no surprise that after just a couple days the prisoners were at their mental and physical limits - even Tadeusz, despite him being young, healthy, and athletic. The Quarantine’s role was indeed that of a first selection process, supposed to weed out the sickly and weak. Still, “Iron Fist” Teddy passed; and now he had to work.Hard laborTeddy’s very first job at Auschwitz was to fill the numerous holes present on the camp’s uneven terrain with rubble, which was extremely tedious, but he rapidly took advantage of the fact the various work units were still getting created in the early days of the camp and he managed to get a spot in the harvesting team (consisting in manual harvesting that is), which he thought would be relatively easier.In reality the work wasn’t much better, and was still very taxing physically; Teddy worked 12 hours a day, from 4am to 6pm, bare footed on the rough soil, going with a daily ration of 250g of bread (0.55 lbs), 1L of watery soup and an occasional 0.5L of coffee (sometimes inmates would get it, sometimes they wouldn’t).Once the harvests were finished, he managed to get work in the camp’s carpentry team, thanks to some workers which he made friends with in Tarnów’s prison. Having no knowledge of carpentry either, he was assigned to physical help and worked as a janitor, notably having to bring random objects created by the carpenters to the camps’ SS commandant Rudolf Höss.He once stumbled while getting on the stairs in said house, and lightly scratched a wall, which Höss’ wife saw. Her husband had Tadeusz whipped 25 times for it by the carpentry’s kapo, Arthur Blake. Tadeusz also unwillingly assisted to violent executions while working outside the barracks, which marked him for life.His janitor’s job allowed him to steal food left unaware in some parts of the camp, which he and his carpenter friends would cook in containers designed to make carpentry glue. Sadly, this would also cause his downfall, as in late October 1940 he was caught stealing potatoes from the camp’s pigsty, for which he was canned 30 times and rapidly relocated to hard physical labor by the carpentry unit’s kapo.He therefore started working in a construction group south of the concentration camp, where Höss decided to build a resort for his SS men, who would otherwise drink themselves to death when on standby out of sheer boredom - sometimes even losing their weapons in the nearby villages. The work was terribly rough, physical, and deadly. In snowy November the prisoners worked in wooden shoes, shorts and plain clothing. Tadeusz was part of a group which carried 50kg (110lb) cement bags all day - something unthinkable for malnourished and physically exhausted prisoners, who oftentimes didn’t weight that much themselves (this was Tadeusz’s case).All the work was happening under the SS men supervision, who beat the prisoners and set their dogs on them for any misdemeanor. Teddy noted that some SS respected the difficulty of the job, and would sometimes give him some food leftovers, but still, prisoners were dying like flies due to the cruel conditions they worked in. Tadeusz himself eventually sensed his end was near, and managed to simulate an accident to return to the camp; he dropped a log of wood on his leg, which rapidly got swollen. Still able to work, but not in such conditions, he was not executed but sent back to Auschwitz in the next convoy.Aerial view of KL Auschwitz-Birkeneau. KL is the abbreviation for Konzentrationlager (“concentration camp” in German), whereas Auschwitz and Birkenau (respectively Oświęcim and Brzezinka in Polish) were the cities inbetween which the camp was situated, hence its name. One has to understand that most concentration camps were gigantic, housing up to tens of thousands of prisoners at once; they were small cities in their own right.Auschwitz’ first boxing matchDue to his injury, he was assigned to “light work” in the Strassenreiniger unit, which did streets’ cleaning in the camp. This allowed him to survive, but Tadeusz kept actively looking for food - as “it was impossible to survive on a camp’s ration alone” - and putting himself in great peril doing so. In fact, he survived miraculously an encounter with rapportführer Palitzsche, one of the most feared figures in the camp, an SS known for killing prisoners on a whim; while exiting the n°3 block where a fellow inmate had just cooked him some stolen potatoes which he still held in his hands, he fell right on the unfamous Nazi. Teddy directly stood to attention and adopted the protocol:-Haftling Numer 77 bei der Arbeit! [“Prisonner n°77 reports for work!”]-Was ist denn los? [“What happened” said Palitzsche while pointing at the potatoes]-Ich habe geklaut [“I stole them” answered Tadeusz without reflexion]Palitzsche looked at him… and turned around without saying anything, heading to block n°2. Tadeusz on the other hand didn’t move for a moment, numbed by his own luck, as even with somebody else, food stealing resulted in heavy beating in the best case - with Patitzsche however, if was a death sentence. Recovering his senses, he quickly ran to another block.He worked in the Strassenreiniger unit during most of winter, up until a certain night, first Sunday of March 1941, when another prisoner came to him. Tadeusz was nude, sitting on a pile of bricks while his cloths were being checked for lices. Outside one could hear screams, and appeals to beatings in both German and Polish. Just two weeks ago had arrived to the camp a new German kapo, Walter Dunning, a big guy. He loved violence. Since his arrival 20 inmates already had been made unable to work due to his beatings.The man who came to Teddy asked him if he wanted to earn bread in a boxing fight. He accepted on the spot, for his situation was dire. He had no skills that could make him live in the camp; he was of no utility to the Germans, and was barely surviving through risky stealing. At this point, Tadeusz had been underfed for over a year, and was weighting about 40kg (88 lbs). The interesting thing here is that inmates didn’t reach out to him knowing he was a boxer, as almost nobody knew that in the camp; however many prisoners had noticed Tadeusz handled the overseers’ beatings remarkably well.So did the kapos, and they were the ones who proposed the bread reward as a bait, thinking this would be a nice bloodshed to witness - for Tadeusz was to fight Walter Dunning himself, who was incidentally the actual Germany middleweight boxing vice-champion and a real professional boxer. Dunning weighted about 70kg (154lbs), which would have been around 20 weight classes higher than Tadeusz (!) if there were actually weight divisions taking into account such low weights (in reality, it stops at minimum-weight (< 48kg =105lbs), which is 12 weight classes lower than Middleweight).Out of all the beatings Auschwitz had seen on its soil, this was the very first actual boxing fight to have ever taken place in the camp.The boxing ring was initially made in the corner of the main kitchen building. There were no boxing gloves yet, therefore the fighters simply wore thin working gloves instead. When Tadeusz arrived, the crowd of prisoners and kapos waiting for him started laughing and taping themselves on the head, seeing the short skeletal man who came to fight the imposing, hyperviolent and famously skilled Walter Dunning. His opponent even sarcastically asked him if he really wanted to fight. But Teddy “Iron Fist” did not fear him.The German was fighting for fun and fame, Tadeusz was fighting for survival. And when the bell rung, he directly started pounding Walter while evading all of his punches. Hit and run, endlessly. Not once did he get hit in the first round. During the break, waiting for the second round, he looked around him. The German kapos and prisoners were staring at him in silent disbelief, their sarcastic smiles having all but disappeared, while the Poles started calling out for him: “Hit, hit the German!”. Fearing kapos’ retaliation against them, he made signs for his fellowmen to stop, which was well received by the Germans.In the second round, Teddy also danced around his opponent, evading all attacks while being aggressive himself. Rapidly, one of his left hooks landed right on Dünning’s nose, making blood pour out of it, and causing his opponent to back up momentarily. Not knowing whether he could push it and go for the kill not against a kapo, Tadeusz froze, waiting for his opponent’s reaction. However, the enthralled Polish spectators started screaming again “Hit him, hit the German!”, which in return caused Dünning… to enrage and turn on them. He jumped on the public and started punching left and right, while the other kapos landed him a hand, beating the crowd into silence.Dünning then came back to Tadeusz with a smile, told him the fight was over, that he was a worthy opponent, and expressed his admiration to his new rival’s skills. He then took him to another block to get his piece of bread (which Tadeusz directly shared with his block friends when he got back to the dormitory), while Otto Küssel (another kapo who assisted to the fight and was responsible for assigning camp’s prisoners to the different units - a very interesting figure in the camp, known as a philanthrope who helped the inmates, hated Hitler and who was dropped of all charges after the war) asked him where he wanted to work. Tadeusz asked for a spot in the Tierpfleger (work in the barn and stables), not really believing he’d get it.Yet Küssel kept his word, and Tadeusz was called to his new unit the next day, where he met again some of his former friends from the harvesting team. This allowed him to survive, as prisoners in the Tierpleger could get additional food. Tadeusz was now to take care of young calves (he would sometimes stealthily drink some of the milk he was supposed to feed them with), which was one of the easiest jobs on the camp. But he also decided to execute some of the hardest tasks the barn had, relieving some of his fellow inmates from difficult work, so along with better feeding he could recover his former strength and minimize the chances of being sent to another unit and loosing on the ring.And this way, his new boxing career begun.The boxer of AuschwitzOrganized boxing matches became one of the most popular distractions in Auschwitz, mainly consisting of Polish prisoners fighting one another for food. Tadeusz generally went easy on his opponents. He didn’t want to give the German overseers any satisfaction from assisting to fraternal warfare when he fought against his fellow Poles, nor did he want to give too much punishment to other inmates who just desperately tried to get something to eat through these fights. He was particularly cautious when fighting Jewish prisoners, as for them, those matches were often a matter of life or death. If they didn’t give a good performance, they would generally be executed shortly after by the SS or kapos; for them, he would adapt the fight so they could live.Rudolf Höss in the middle, SS’ on his sides. The camps’ commandants would often be present during important boxing fights.Boxing matches opposing random prisoners against Germans (there were quite a few German inmates - sometimes Jews - who’d often be kapos) were generally led by the organizers’ sadistic tendencies, and would ignore most boxing rules. The prisoner, if loosing, would often get violently beaten down on the ground, sometimes straight into disability - and therefore, soon after, to death.Boxing in Auschwitz rapidly turned into a giant gambling feast for Germans. Kapos and the SS (up to the camp’s commandant himself) would bet important sums of money on the fighters, for better or worse; sometimes, the SS man losing money would execute the defeated fighter he had bet on, or assign him to the worse units - which was as close as you could get to a death sentence. The opposite was also true; ecstatic after winning 1000 marks (~6,000 dollars in today’s money) from betting on Tadeusz for a certain fight, SS Karl Egersdorfer told him he’d make any of his wishes come true - to which Tadeusz answered he’d like something to eat. Egersdorfer happily accepted and commanded for 5 kettles of soup not eaten by the SS to be given to him and his friends.Tadeusz Pietrzykowski was the most dominant boxer of the camp by a long shot, despite being naturally one of the smallest fighters. The fights in Auschwitz generally took place on Sundays, and it is estimated Teddy fought over 50 times - although the exact count is not known due to the lack of archives - and out of these matches, he lost only once, in 1942, against the Danish welterweight champion Leu Sanders (welterweight is 63–67 kg, 139–147 lbs, which is already 6 categories above Teddy’s original weight class) - but he avenged that very defeat two weeks later in a rematch by technical KO.By then, the Germans had nicknamed him Weiss Nebel, “The white fog” for his incredible ability to evade his opponents’ punches. In fact, he became a relatively important figure in the camp, bringing hope and pride to the desperate Polish prisoners through his victories - especially the ones against German inmates - and gaining the sympathy of many kapos and overseers for his quality as an athlete and eventual money maker.Nazis would even specifically look for prisoners that could fight him every new convoy; his popularity grew to the point where he could allow himself to be insolent with the SS with no repercussions. Yet, the camp’s dynamics were complicated, and despite his general fame with the Germans, there were some who did not see the successes of a Slavic untermensch under a good light, even less so when it brought defiance against the Nazis’ authority amongst prisoners. And to these people Tadeusz’s presence started becoming undesirable.That’s why following a brutal boxing match against a German kapo known for his cruelty against Poles (whom Tadeusz took great satisfaction in knocking out violently), SS doctor Entres took the Polish boxer to the medical block n°20, and under the pretext of a vitamins injection he infected him with Typhus. Teddy rapidly developed a strong fever, and was stuck in bed in the block, where he was “healed” under the supervision of dr Entres who initially kept an eye on him.But his friends and the Poles from block n°20 did their best to take care of him, and didn’t let him die. After two weeks of lying in bed, still very weak and unable to walk, Tadeusz was in a helpless situation; a Nazi inspection was about to happen the next day to get rid of the ill prisoners of the block still unable to work - and he was most definitely on the waiting line.But he would escape death one more time, as a group of Poles came to visit him the night before, led by a certain Tomasz Serafiński… one the leading figures of the underground resistance movement in KL Auschwitz.Tomasz Serafiński was the false name used by Witold Pilecki, a famous Polish soldier volunteered to get to Auschwitz to work undercover as an informant for the Polish army, and by extension, for the allies. He was written about extensively on Quora (Who are some lesser known people who changed the world?). Tadeusz was an important person in the camp, who dramatically boosted the prisoners’ morals, and Pilecki had to take the risks necessary to save him.The group exfiltred Tadeusz to another block just before the inspection, hid him for a day, and then got him back to the hospital where they nurtured Teddy back to health, along with helping him get a new job once he was in shape, this time in the SS-revier (the hospital of the SS), where he worked as a janitor - while still regularly fighting in boxing matches. His continuous victories, even against German boxing champions (such as Wilhelmen Maierem, middleweight vice-champion of Europe of 1927 and double German champion in 1922/1923) kept shining in the hearts of the desperate Polish prisoners, being described by former inmates as a “transfusion of faith”, “a proof that Germans could be defeated”.This caused the camp’s Gestapo (secret police) itself to grow interested in him in early 1943, and Tadeusz would have probably been executed in the following weeks, if not for - again! - a great streak of luck, namingly the visit to Auschwitz of one of the higher graded intendents of Neuengamme’s concentration camp, Hans Lütkemeyer… whom he knew personally.Hans Lütkemeyer was a former boxing referee, and he was the one who actually arbitered in 1938 the final match of an international boxing tournament held in Poznań, Poland, which was won by Tadeusz in his weight category. They later sat next to each other at the post-tournament banquet, got well together, exchanged photos and became friends – something war had not erased. Hans actually came to the camp to organize a prisoners’ transport from Auschwitz to KL Neuengamme, and he happily took Tadeusz with him, along with several of the boxer’s closest friends.NeuengammeNeuengamme’s camp was situated in Northern Germany, next to Hamburg, relatively close to the sea. This camp was special, as the Germans used the local prisoners’ workforce for weaponry production. This is why transports from other concentration camps such as Auschwitz were organized in the first place; the Nazis desperately needed more workers for this vital industry… to replace the ones that were constantly dying of abuse.Neuengamme’s inmates digging the Dove-Elbe canal. The photographs are scarce for this camp.Upon arrival, Tadeusz and his convoy were shouted at by the camp’s prisoners from the other side of barbed wire: “Neuengamme isn’t Auschwitz, here you won’t last long!”. It’s true that Neuengamme was a very rough place, especially for Poles, who were treated the worse among the inmates (with Jews and Russians). Indeed, the Polish language was illegal in the camp, and in order to break the inmates’ spirits Germans organized executions of Poles on every Polish national day, along with constant acts of sadism directed specifically at them.Once again, Tadeusz and his companions went through a Quarantine period, during which the rumor had it a boxer had just arrived to the camp. The SS higher ups - who organized boxing fights in Neuengamme for a while, too - heard about it and decided to put Tadeusz’s skills to the test in a sparring session with another Polish prisoner - who happened to be somebody Teddy had already met and taught boxing in Auschwitz. Satisfied by what they saw, they soon decided to arrange a fight with a very big and sadistic anti-Polish German kapo, Jimmi Kachta, whose shoulders were higher than the top of Tadeusz’s head. The match referee was to be Hans Lütkemeyer, again.Tadeusz’s friends who came in the same transport feared for him, as despite all the things he did in Auschwitz, this time his opponent seemed too big - yet the Polish boxer wasn’t deterred. The boxing match was coming soon, and the whole camp knew about it. On the day of the fight, Kachta came to Tadeusz and offered him a piece of bread with a smile on his face, claiming that this would be his last meal. Tadeusz accepted, amused by his opponent’s confidence.The match happened near the Quarantine barracks, in the evening. Most of the camp’s prisoners had gathered in the evening for the fight, often separated from the scene by fences as they were in other sections of the camp. They couldn’t even see the match, but they wanted to know the result. And they didn’t wait very long, as the fight was short.Tadeusz forced his opponent to hunch himself by going low, which coupled with the height difference made the fight very uncomfortable for the German. He then seemingly avoided confrontation, playing on the kapos’ overconfidence, barely attacking and dancing around, letting his opponent’s guard go down… until the moment he did a rapid dodge and cleanly landed a right hand straight on the German’s jaw from a blind spot, causing an instant knockdown, and having him hit his head violently on the wooden canvas.Kachta started regaining consciousness after the count was already at 8, and thanks to the harsh rules of concentration camps’ boxing he was allowed to continue, but it was already over. Soon after Tadeusz repeated the exact same combination, causing his giant opponent’s lights to go out for 15 minutes.Testimonies from the time claim that the public literally exploded in joy, with some prisoners going as far as tearing metal grids and barbed wire apart with their bare hands just to get closer to the incredible short man who had just knocked out one of the worse abusers of the camp. Even the SS were enthusiastic about the incredible scene they had just witnessed, and awarded Tadeusz a special meal… dog’s thighs.This event caused a sudden “fashion” for Poles amongst the higher ups of the camp. Everybody wanted to have a Pole under his command, in his unit. Tadeusz and his fights became a central part of the Polish prisoners’ life and of the camp’s general atmosphere. He continued forth as the boxer of Neuengamme, fighting every Sunday for food and glory, and never loosing - even against opponents sometimes so tall he couldn’t reach their jaws.The boxer of NeuengammeTeddy’s early career pictures.His most famous fight in Neuengamme - in 1944 - is worth noting, as it inspired the novel “The Boxer and Death”, which later lead to an eponym Slovak film and influenced the scenario of a more known Hollywood movie called “The triumph of the Spirit”; Teddy battled the German professional boxer Schally Hottenbach, former America’s middleweight vice-champion.As opposed to most of the German kapos, Schally was actually massively supported by the SS and the German prisoners, therefore the fight quickly got political. Their first fight - 3 rounds long - ended in a draw. Schally fought well initially, but Teddy was gradually working him up and if not for the final bell ring, he would have knocked out his opponent cold.This caused the situation to grow even more tense, as a victor had to emerge from a rematch. And indeed, said rematch was one of the biggest events to ever happen in the camp. Everyone was waiting for it. Inmates, SS, the higher command. There were even v.i.p. Germans from Hamburg invited to Neuengamme for this very fight. Gambling was starting to get through the roof, as Hamburg had recently been bombed, and prisoners sent there had found thousands of marks in the debris - marks which had little use on the camp outside of said gambling.Funnily enough, it rapidly became known among the inmates that Neuengamme camp’s commander, Max Pauly, despite his reputation as a “Pole-killer” … had actually bet on Teddy. At the beginning of the fight, the Polish boxer - who did not want to be robbed of victory this time again - did something very unusual. He addressed himself directly to Max Pauly and demanded the fight to last until one of the boxers is knocked out. Surprised and a little bit worried about his losing his bet, the camp’s commander eventually agreed, causing the public to clamor in excitement.The rematch was short and intensive. The boxers fought on an equal footing in the first round, exchanging blows and evading their opponent’s attacks skillfully, while the public was going crazy.In the second round, Teddy went all out from the start, showering his German opponent in punches, until he landed a clean uppercut on his jaw. He then remembered his old trainer F.Stamm’s words: “Never concede a single second to your rival after connecting a shot. A strong punch is but an occasion to seize the moment”. And so Teddy did, following his attack by a series of blows ending by a brutal hook on Schally’s jaw, violently knocking out cold his opponent. The public roared…! And the boxer of Neuengamme remained undefeated.Escaping death again, and the liberationSoon after this fight, Teddy learned from the SS men who liked him that the local Gestapo wanted to execute him - for the exact same reasons than in Auschwitz. His referee friend Hans Lütkemeyer had just been sent away, and most of the former SS staff (which had become relatively pro-Polish in the past year) had been sent to the Eastern Front, being replaced by staunchly anti-Polish Germans. He had fought 20 times on Neuengamme’s ring, and undefeated and reigning, but he now had to flee. Thanks to his connections and relative authority, he managed to arrange a rapid change of units to be transported to a sub-camp of Neuengamme in the city of Salzgitter, far away, and thus once again escaped death’s fingers.Nevertheless, soon after his arrival he fell strongly ill to some sort of pneumonia, and unfortunately the local facilities were not functional enough to take care of him properly. Unable to work and lying for already quite some time, he would again have probably been disposed of, if not for the help of a fellow Polish inmate working in the small sub-camp hospital, who claimed to the local commandant that Tadeusz might be infected with Typhus. Fearing for an epidemic, he ordered Tadeusz to be transported to another sub-camp in Drütte, where Tadeusz was lucky to be was taken care of by a Polish doctor.After about two months of recovery, he managed to get work in the same facilities he had just been healed in; within the hospital. As the soviets kept pushing in the East, Germans soon had no other choice but to evacuate the camp. And the 24th March 1945, Teddy found himself in a transport to KL Bergen-Belsen, deeper in German lands. Bergen-Belsen was originally a camp in which “important” Jews from allied/neutral countries were detained, in hope of later using them to put pressure on their home countries and to treat them as currency for eventual war prisoners’ trades. For this reason, the camp wasn’t willingly killing its inmates at work, and was officially labelled in a stroke of psychopathic humor a “relaxational camp” (“Erholungslager”) by the Nazis.The train passed several German cities on its way, including a stop at the station in Celle, a city 20km away from KL Bergen-Belsen. At his arrival, the transport had the misfortune of halting in between a train containing ammunition and an other containing fuel. And of course, just moments later… Americans started bombing the city. But again, Tadeusz’s mad luck prevailed.Out of the 4000 prisoners transported from KL Neuengamme by this train, only 300 survived the onslaught. Teddy was among them, almost unscathed by the powerful explosions. Whoever was left alive and still able to walk went to the camp on their feet, escorted by the Hitlerjugend.Upon arrival, there were no formalities, nor any Quarantine. Lucky once more, Teddy met former Auschwitz SS men who instantly recognized him, including Karl Egersdorf, the man who gave him 5 soup pots after winning 1000 marks from a bet on the Polish boxer’s victory. This, again, allowed him to survive, as through these connections he managed to get a preferential job, which was of utmost importance as the war was lost for the Germans and the situation was deteriorating very rapidly in camp – notably when it comes to the resources allocated for the prisoners.At this point, hunger and epidemics were decimating the Bergen-Belsen camp’s population at an alarming rate (especially among women and children), there were rumors about blowing the whole place up with the prisoners when the allies would be too close, and many of the SS wanted to flee to Hamburg. In fact, the SS men of the camp partially actually did run away during the negotiations with the allies to liberate the camp, but most came back after what seems to be a misunderstanding of orders. The last days of the camp were chaotic, as the SS supervision stopped.The allies entered the KL Bergen-Belsen about 3 weeks later, 15th April 1945. What they saw didn’t really meet the expectations they had from a so called “relaxational camp”. On about 1 square mile (1600m x 1600m), there were 60 000 prisoners packed, about half of which were either dead or dying. There were corpses hanging from barracks’ windows, dead and alive people laying one on the other indiscriminately, random stacks of corpses dispersed around the area, pits filled with corpses this and there, and wailing but living skeletal humans crawling around trying to find food, all in the midst of unbearable fetor. The first journalist to enter the camp was George Rodger, and he admitted 40 years later that he did never once look again at the photos he took that day; he simply couldn’t bear the sight.Even though from the allies’ perspective the camp’s liberation was an almost traumatic event due to the sheer amount of nightmarish suffering they were exposed to, the prisoners remembered this day as one of the best they had during the whole war; those who were still able to walk ran to the liberators with screams of joy. The conflict was finally over, and for the first time in 5 years Tadeusz was free. It was a lucky time for him, as he also found his future wife, Zofia – who worked in the camp’s hospital as a nurse – hiding between corpses a couple days prior to the liberation.Bergen-Belsen’s liberation - one of the “lighter” pictures taken by George Rodger.Post war life - and deathAfter the war, Tadeusz temporarily stayed on the allies’ controlled side of Europe, and kept working as a soldier for the local Polish army until 1946. He continued boxing semi-professionally while organizing sport events for Polish soldiers, fighting 17 times in total on German, French and Belgian rings in that 1.5 years’ span; he scored 15 wins, 2 draws, and no losses. He became quite known amongst allied soldiers, as “the one with Iron Fists”. Still, he was missing his family and his country.Right after KL Bergen-Belsen’s liberation, he participated to anti-Nazi investigation missions, which screened the surrounding areas looking for SS men hiding amongst civilians. One of the things this answer - despite its length - might have not conveyed properly, is that Teddy actively participated in underground anti-SS movements, especially in Auschwitz. He was actually a close friend to Witold Pilecki, the leader of the underground movement in the camp, and one of his most trusted cooperators; one of the first people Pilecki visited when he returned to Poland after the war was actually his friend Tadeusz. Teddy swore an oath to Pilecki in 1941 – in the presence of other underground fighters – with regards to their common work and mutual fidelity in the face of German oppression.Tadeusz notably conspired against KL Auschwitz’ commandant Rudolph Höss with other prisoners, trying to kill him – between others - with Typhus infected lices (which were commonly used against the SS) and by forcing a horse accident, but the Nazi leader kept surviving, at most breaking his leg during one of the attempts. Teddy managed however to kill his favorite dog, Rolf - which was trained to jump to the throat of Jews upon hearing “Juden!” - and ate him with his friends. Despite intensive researches Höss never found his dog again, nor did he learn what happened to him.Tadeusz decided in 1946 to come back to Poland, reluctantly getting under the Soviets’ umbrella. Sadly, he learned his mother had died in 1945, but he still met with the rest of his family and came back to Warsaw, his city – to what was left of it, that is.The castle square of Warsaw, end of WWII.In 1947, when Pilecki was falsely tried for treason by the Soviets, Tadeusz got caught in the crossfire and was himself interrogated and insolently suspected of “national treason”. He would have probably been heavily sentenced for his work in the Polish army if not for the fact the interrogator he fell on was the brother of a KL Auschwitz inmate he had helped in the camp – the man instead thanked Teddy and arranged the investigation to be abandoned and the charges to be dropped.This was but one more time he had escaped death, but Pilecki wasn’t this lucky; he was executed the same year, shot in the back of the head by the Soviets (his body has yet to be found). Tadeusz was strongly affected by this event. Still, he dreamed of coming back to the rings, but after getting very sick in 1946, his condition was never the same again. He fought only once more between the ropes, against his former rival and Polish champion Antoni Czortek, and unfortunately, for the first time in years, Tadeusz lost. Not feeling it anymore he decided to retire on the spot.He went on to become a teacher in middle & high school for the rest of his life; he mostly taught physical education, but also chemistry, amongst others. He was a coach for a while in a correctional school, where he taught difficult kids fair play and mutual respect. He was energetic and opened, which was very appreciated by the youth. His beautiful art pieces would decorate the hallway leading to the school’s gym. His pupils adored him and saw him as a role model.He would sometimes talk to his students about what he experienced in concentration camps with a trembling voice, often mentioning his spiritual figure, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, a catholic priest who was imprisoned in Auschwitz and volunteered to get gazed instead of a prisoner he didn’t even know – an event that marked Teddy for all of his life, for he knew the priest personally and was attached to him.Finally, Tadeusz died in 1991 at the age of 74 from a stroke. The same morning, he had written a letter to his daughter and grandchildren, in which he did not forget to express his sincere love to them. And that’s how the hero’s legend ended.Many professional boxers fought for bread – and often, for their lives – in KL Auschwitz. The most known of them in popular culture are Salamo Arouch and Victor Perez; both had their struggles in the camp immortalized by movies relating their stories (respectively Triumph of the Spirit (1989) and Victor Young Perez (2013)). Victor Perez in particular lost his life in 1945, during the evacuation march of Auschwitz, shot by a guard while attempting to distribute bread he had found to other starving prisoners.But both of them arrived to the camp in 1943, when Teddy was already gone, and they never got to meet the former undisputed Auschwitz champion. However, even though they did not meet him, he was with them until the very end; as related by the end of the war by the Polish writer and former inmate T.Borkowski, who arrived to the camp in 1943 and had never seen Tadeusz either:“To this day we all hold deep within us the memory of inmate n°77, he who beat the Germans as he wished”.Inmate n°77, a mural in the name of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, Nidzica, PolandI wrote this answer based on the most complete and researched biography we have of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, namingly the book “Bokser z Auschwitz” (“The Boxer from Auschwitz”) written by Marta Bogacka.

99 Tiny Stories to Make You Think, Smile and Cry:Today, it’s been ten years since my abusive ex-fiancé sold my favorite guitar. He sold it on the day I left him. When I went to claim my belongings, he was proud that he had sold it to a pawn shop. Luckily, I managed to track down the guy who bought it from the pawn shop. He was really sweet, and gave it back to me for free, on the condition that I accompany him on his front porch for an hour to play guitar with him. He grabbed a second guitar and we ended up sitting there on his porch for the rest of the afternoon playing music, talking, and smiling. He’s been my husband for nine years now. MMTToday would have been the 127th day in a row that I visited her at the hospital as she rested in a coma. But last night I had a dream that she died, and I woke up in tears this morning and couldn’t bring myself to drive to the hospital to see her lying there like that. So I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinking of how I was going to have to learn to live without her for the rest of my life. And then my phone rang, and it was her. MMTToday, about an hour after I lost my wallet, a man showed up at my front door with it. Everything was intact including the $200 in cash. As I expressed my gratitude, he explained to me that he hopes doing the right thing pays off for him. “Oddly enough, I lost my wallet sometime this morning too,” he said. “I had about the same amount of cash in there that you have and all my cards and IDs.” Without thinking about it, I pulled out $100 and handed it to him. “Take this, I insist,” I said. “Just in case you don’t find your wallet, we’ll split the cash.” He gratefully accepted the money and left. This evening he knocked on my door again. “Here’s your $100 back,” he said. “A woman found my wallet and returned it and all my cash about an hour ago.” MMTToday, while I was browsing in a secondhand bookshop, I found a copy of a book that had been stolen from me when I was a kid. I opened it and saw, on the first page, in familiar hand writing, my own name. It had been a gift from my (now late) grandfather. Next to my name my grandfather wrote, “I hope you rediscover this book someday when you’re older, and it makes you think about the important things in life.” MMTToday, a week after I donated three bags of clothes to a local homeless shelter, I saw a homeless woman sitting on a park bench wearing a tye-dyeshirt I made when I was a teenager. I walked by her and said, “I love your shirt!” She smiled and said, “Thank you! I really do too!” MMTToday at 7AM, I pulled over on my way to work to help a lady change a flat tire. At 4PM, she saved my life when she randomly saw me downtown and yanked me backward out of a crosswalk as a car ran the red light. MMTToday, it’s been five years since my mom was in a car accident that resulted in her losing all of her long-term memory from before the crash. When I was little, my mom and I used to quote a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ book as an inside joke. One of us would ask, “Have you ever seen a dragon fly?” And the other would reply, “I have, I have seen a dragon fly!” This evening I was sitting with her while we were watching TV and I randomly asked, “Have you ever seen a dragon fly?” And she responded with, “I have, I have seen a dragon fly!” We stared at each other for a prolonged moment, and then she jumped out of her seat and exclaimed, “Oh my god, I remember!” MMTToday, I have a disorder which frequently makes me faint for a few seconds, making it hard for me to be independent and hold down a steady job. I used to be really depressed about it, but my family and friends turned my illness into a game, seeing who could make me laugh the hardest when I returned to consciousness. They have also turned catching me into a sport. Believe it or not, I haven’t hit the floor once in the past two years. Someone has always been there to catch me. MMTToday was my first day back on the job after more than a year on disability leave due to a freak explosion in the plant that, among other injuries, left me legally deaf in both ears. When I walked into the plant this morning several of my colleagues signed me phrases like “Great to see you,” “Welcome back,” and “We missed you.” It turns out that nine of my colleagues got together and took a sign language course, just like I did, over the last several months. They did this so they could easily communicate with me when I returned. Their compassion MMT.Today, I am an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran. Upon arriving home three years ago from my final tour to Afghanistan I found out that my wife had been cheating on me and had spent/stole almost all of our money. I had nowhere to stay and no phone and was suffering from severe anxiety problems. One of my close friends from high school, Shawn, and his wife, seeing that I was in need of help, took me in and let me live with their family of five. They helped me deal with my divorce and get my life together. Since then, I’ve moved into my own place, opened a fairly successful diner, and my friend’s kids call my Uncle Jay when they see me. The way they adopted me into their family in my desperate time of need will always MMT.Today, I have been a counselor for foster care children for almost 15 years. This afternoon I ran into one of my previous foster children I hadn’t seen in over 5 years. About 10 years ago, on a day he was really upset and mad at life, I drew him a sketch of a superhero and wrote him a note on an index card about how he is a superhero and that superheroes always rise up and win in the end. I saw him today as I walked past the local fire station. He’s now a fire fighter. He recognized me as I walked by and ran up to me. We talked for about a half hour, and then before we parted ways he took his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out the superhero index card I made for him when he was a kid. MMTToday, I have diabetes. Two years ago, after my mom passed away, I inherited her cat, Kita. At 3AM this morning Kita woke me up by sitting at the foot of the bed and meowing VERY loud over and over again. I had never heard her sound that way, so I sat up in bed to see what was wrong. As soon as I did, I realized I felt extremely lightheaded and weak. I grabbed my glucose meter and tested myself. My level was down to 53. Normal, according to my doctor, is between 70 and 120. My doctor told me that had Kita not awakened me, I may have never awakened at all. MMTToday, we live in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. My wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer, so my 14-year-old son decided that he wanted to raise money to help pay for some of her miscellaneous medical expenses. His idea was to go door to door around the neighborhood with battery operated hair clippers and let people shave a part of his head for a small donation of their choosing. He asked me whether a $100 goal would be too much. I told him not to get his hopes up. He came back home ten minutes ago with a totally bald head and $1,223. Two people gave him $100 bills. MMTToday, it’s been ten years since my best friend became ill and needed a kidney transplant. As I was a fitting donor, I chose to donate one of my healthy kidneys to her even after doctors said her chance of survival was only 30%, and that there would be inherent risks to my health as well. But here I am at 10AM, getting ready to drive to her wedding venue where, in just a few short hours, I will be her maid of honor as she marries the love of her life who she happened to meet at the hospital ten years ago. MMTToday, I was buying food at the grocery store for my family, but at the checkout counter my debit card came back declined for over-withdrawal. (I’ve been laid off from work for awhile now and am barely making ends meet.) As I quickly explained myself to the cashier and started putting back some of the food I had picked out, the man in line behind me stepped forward and paid for all my groceries. I thanked him, and he said, “Someone did the same thing for me several years ago. This is my opportunity to pay it forward. I hope you can do the same someday.” MMTToday, exactly 10 months after suffering from a severe stroke that nearly killed him, my dad got up from his wheelchair without any help for the first time, and slow danced with me during the father/daughter dance at my wedding. MMTToday, a big stray dog randomly followed me from the subway on my walk home. For about six blocks he followed just a few paces behind me. And just as this began to freak me out, a guy came out of nowhere, held a knife up to my face, and yelled, “Give me your purse!” Before I had a chance to react, the stray dog lunged at the man and bit his leg. He dropped the knife and fell to the ground as I ran away. I am now at home, safely, because of that dog. MMTToday my son, who I adopted eight months ago at the age of seven, called me ‘mom’ for the very first time. MMTToday, I’m a police officer stationed at the state court house. This afternoon the judge finalized a case in which a 3-year-old boy was officially adopted by his late mom’s best friend two years after the boy’s parents and grandparents died in a car accident. The boy has been living with his mom’s best friend ever since the accident, and he treats her as if she is his real mom. Once the adoption was approved, everyone in the courtroom was smiling. But before the judge had a chance to slam the gavel and dismiss everyone, the boy ran up to the judge and asked if he could do it. The judge laughed and nodded yes. So, smiling ear to ear, the boy sat on the judge’s lap, looked up at everyone in the courtroom, slammed the gavel, and finalized his own adoption. MMTToday, my 17 year old autistic brother, Kevin, played guitar and sang every single word, flawlessly, to the Lifehouse song ‘Hanging by a Moment’ for his girlfriend (who is also autistic) on their one year anniversary. His girlfriend’s smile lit up the room. Although he struggles with a severe speech impediment, he has been practicing for this every single day since they first started dating. MMTToday, at the local convenience store where I work an elderly man with a guide dog came in, went to the aisle with the greetings cards, picked up a card, held it up extremely close to his face, and struggled to read it. Just as I was about to walk over to help him, a big truck driver asked him if he needed assistance reading, and then proceeded to read him almost every single greeting card out loud until the elderly man smiled and said, “That’s perfect! My wife will love that one!” MMTToday, when I landed at J.F.K. for a business trip, I turned on my phone and was inundated with several voicemails and text messages from family and close friends back in Seattle. “Call home. Your mom had a severe stroke and is currently in intensive care,” read the first text message to pop-up on my phone. My boss was with me, told me she’d handle things herself, and insisted that I catch the next flight back home. As I stood in line at the ticket counter, talking to my brother about my mother’s condition, crying, and explaining that I was going to try to make a flight that leaves in 30 minutes, the twelve people in line in front of me overheard my conversation and let me skip to the front. Then after the Delta rep quickly issued me a ticket, she walked around the counter, handled me a box of tissues, and before I had a chance to react, gave me a big hug. I made my flight. And my mom is now in stable condition. MMTToday, a deaf-mute child I have been caring for 5 days a week for the last 4 years looked up at me this afternoon after I fed him his favorite lunch and spoke aloud to me for the first time. He said, “Thank you, Monica. I love you.” MMTToday, the man that saved my life 28 years ago when he singlehandedly fought off three other men who were trying to rape me, walks with a cane due to the leg injury he suffered by doing so. And he looked so proud today when he put down his cane and slowly walked our daughter down the aisle. MMTToday, outside the doctor’s office, approximately 15 minutes after we received the discouraging news about my incurable cancer, she got down on one knee and asked me to marry her. MMTToday, my dad is the best dad I could ask for. He’s a loving husband to my mom (always making her laugh), he’s been to every one of my soccer games since I was 5 (I’m 17 now), and he provides for our family as a construction foreman. This morning when I was searching through my dad’s toolbox for a pliers, I found a dirty folded up paper at the bottom. It was an old journal entry in my dad’s handwriting dated exactly one month before the day I was born. It reads, “I am eighteen years old, an alcoholic who is failing out of college, a past cutter, and a child abuse victim with a criminal record of auto theft. And next month, ‘teen father’ will be added to the list. But, I swear I will make things right for my little girl. I will be the dad I never had.” And I don’t know how he did it, but he did it. MMTToday, I have an elderly patient who is suffering from a severe case of Alzheimer’s. He can rarely remember his own name, and he often forgets where he is and what he said just a few minutes beforehand. But by the stretch of some miracle (perhaps the miracle of love), he remembers who his wife is every morning when she shows up to spend a few hours with him. He usually greets her by saying, “Hello my beautiful Kate.” MMTToday, I’m a teacher in a low income neighborhood in greater Detroit. Because their parents don’t have enough money, some of my students come to school without lunch, or without money for lunch. So I lend them a few dollars here and there to buy a school lunch when they are short on cash. I’ve been doing this for several years, and other teachers think I’m crazy. But of the few hundred dollars I’ve lent students over the years, I have received every single cent back. Sometimes it takes them a few weeks, but every one of my students has paid me back without me asking. MMTToday, when my wife showed up to do a 5K walk in support of her breast cancer, over 200 of her current and past students (she’s a high school English teacher) and several of her colleagues showed up, unexpectedly, wearing pink shirts with her photo and a caption that read, “We’re going to beat this together.” I’ve never seen my wife so overwhelmed with joy before in my life. MMTToday, my cat got out of my downtown condo and got lost. I was sad because I figured I’d never see her again. About 24 hours after I posted flyers on telephone poles in the city I received a call from a man who found my cat. It turned out the man was homeless and used 50 cents to call me from a payphone. He was insanely nice and even bought a can of food for my cat. I gave the man all the cash I had on me as a reward. MMTToday, my brother spends most of his free time at school hanging out with the football team – he’s actually been working out with the team and everything. My brother has a mild case of autism. About a year ago my mom was ready to pull my brother out of school and have him home schooled due to excessive teasing from peers. One of the popular football players, who had stood up for him in the past, heard about this, explained the situation to his teammates and friends, and stood by his side until the teasing stopped. Now, a year later, he’s just ‘one of the guys.’ MMTToday, almost 5 years after I stopped volunteering at the suicide prevention hotline, the new manager gave me a call. She said this afternoon they received a $25,000 anonymous donation to help fund the support line. Along with the donation they received an email that read, “Thank you Claire. You saved my life.” Apparently, I’m the only Claire who ever volunteered there. MMTToday, a homeless man whom I recognize from around the neighborhood came into my bakery and purchased a large birthday cake (I gave him a 40% discount). I curiously watched as he walked the cake across the street to another homeless man. The other man started laughing and then the two men hugged. MMTToday, I watched a teenage boy help an elderly woman with a cane onto the city bus I was riding. He was so careful with her, assisting her every step of the way. The woman had the biggest smile on her face. They both sat directly across from me, and just as I was about to compliment her on having a wonderful grandson, the boy looked at her and said, “My name is Chris. What’s your name, ma’am?” MMTToday, I stopped on the side of the road to help an elderly man who was struggling with changing a flat tire. It turns out he was the firefighter who pulled my mom and me out of our burning apartment when I was a kid. Even though I hadn’t seen him in 30 years, it only took me a few seconds to recognize him. We chatted about it for awhile, and then as soon as I had the spare tire secured to his car, we looked at each other, shook hands and said, “Thank you,” simultaneously. MMTToday, my grandmother and grandfather, who were both in their early 90’s and married for 72 years, both died of natural causes approximately one hour apart from each other. MMTToday, my father had a serious heart attack in the waiting room at the hospital as my wife was giving birth to our first child. My father was waiting to welcome his first grandchild into the world. The doctors say he likely would have died if he wasn’t already at the hospital with medical care a few seconds away. But based on the lucky circumstances, he’s expected to make a full recovery. MMTToday, I witnessed a bad car accident at an intersection. An older drunk male with no headlights ran a light and hit a teenager’s car. The drunk driver’s car caught fire. Then the teenager, covered in blood, struggled out of his car, jogged to the burning vehicle and pulled the drunk driver to safety just before the cab of the vehicle burst into flames. MMTToday, I texted my supervisor to tell him I wouldn’t be able to come into work today due to the fact that I’m in the emergency room with my dad after he had a heart attack. I got a response saying I had the wrong number. But then a few minutes later the person called me, told me her prayers are with me and my dad, and then told me a story about how her dad made a full recovery from a heart attack last year. We spoke for a half hour and she made me feel better. People like her who convey unrelenting compassion and goodwill MMT.Today, after my daughter’s funeral I was going through my phone deleting all the condolence messages. There were so many of them that I simply selected ‘delete all,’ but one message didn’t delete. It was the last message my daughter left me before she passed and it was marked as ‘new.’ Sometimes my voicemail forces me to listen to messages before I can delete them, so played it. She said, “Hey dad, I just wanted to let you know I’m okay and I’m home now.” MMTToday, I walked up to the door of my office (I’m a florist) at 7AM to find a uniformed Army soldier standing out front waiting. He was on his way to the airport to go overseas for a year. He said, “I usually bring home a bouquet of flowers for my wife every Friday and I don’t want to let her down when I’m away.” He then placed an order for 52 Friday afternoon deliveries of flowers to his wife’s office and asked me to schedule one for each week until he returns. I gave him a 50% discount because it made my day to see something so sweet. MMTToday, my high school boyfriend, who I thought I’d never see again, showed me the pictures of the two of us he kept in his Army helmet while he was overseas for the last 8 years. MMTToday, a 9-year-old patient of mine will be undergoing her 14th surgery in the past 2 years to combat a rare form of cancer. Even after all the surgeries I’ve never seen her frown. She’s still 100% sure she’ll survive. And I’m certain her attitude is the primary reason she has survived to this point. She still laughs and plays with her friends and family. She has intelligent goals for the future. A kid like her who can go through everything she’s been through and come out smiling MMT.Today, during a fire evacuation at school, I ran outside to find one of the thugs at our school, who is notorious for being a tough guy, holding my little sister’s hand (she’s a special needs student) and telling her, “You’re okay. You’re safe,” and calming her down as she slowly stopped crying. MMTToday, in the background over the phone, I heard my 7-year-old son ask my wife, “If daddy’s job is going so well, how come he’s never home here with us?” MMTToday, when the chief ordered the firefighters to evacuate the building due to “extremely hazardous conditions,” I began to panic even more. My daughter was still trapped inside. But one fire fighter didn’t listen to the orders. Instead he ran around to another apartment unit that borders the other side of our unit, went out onto the balcony, jumped over to our balcony, smashed through the sliding glass door with an axe, and brought my daughter out alive. MMTToday, I was one of the paramedics on the scene where a professional skydiving instructor died due to a parachute failure. As we loaded the man’s body into the back of the ambulance, I noticed his t-shirt. It said, “I died doing what I love.” MMTToday, six months after his passing, I flew from Austin, Texas to Melbourne, Australia to clean out my brother’s overseas condo and finalize its sale. As you might imagine, the entire experience was a sad one. But one thing that jumped out at me was my brother’s desk planner. Two weeks before he passed he crossed out a 9-day vacation on his calendar with a note saying, “Not enough time, maybe next month.” MMTToday, as my grandpa rested in his hospital bed, desperately fighting pancreatic cancer, he squeezed my hand tight and said, “Promise me, no matter how good or bad you have it, you will wake up every morning thankful for your life. Because every morning you wake up, someone somewhere else will be desperately fighting for theirs.” MMTToday, after an 11 month tour of duty in the Army, my husband has been home from Afghanistan for 9 days. During a heavy rain storm this morning at 4AM, following a loud crack of thunder, my husband jumped out of bed, half asleep, and onto the floor and screamed, “Get down! Get down!” MMTToday, I told my 18 year old grandson that nobody asked me to prom when I was in high school, so I didn’t attend. He showed up at my house this evening dressed in a tuxedo and took me as his date to his prom. MMTToday, I watched in horror through the kitchen window as my 2-year-old slipped and fell head first into the pool. But before I could get to her, our Labrador Retriever, Rex, jumped in after her, grabbed her by her shirt collar and pulled her to the shallow steps where she could stand. MMTToday I turned 10. Yes I was born on 9-11-2001. My mom worked in the World Trade Center but wasn’t at work that day because she was giving birth to me. MMTToday, after several kids teased a less fortunate girl (who lives in a poorer neighborhood) this morning for always wearing the same clothes, seven students in my class went home at lunch time, emptied their drawers and closets and brought this girl 16 pristine and beautiful outfits to wear. I found out about this after I asked her why she changed her clothes after lunch today. MMTToday, I was sitting on the steps of a church waiting for a bus when I saw an old Catholic nun being assisted up the steps by a young man wearing a Muslim turban. Once they were at the top, the nun turned to the young man and said, “I can see both of our gods raise beautiful children. Thank you.” The young man smiled and nodded. MMTToday, our high school basketball team has a senior player who uses a wheelchair. He lost both of his legs from the knee down in a car crash when he was a sophomore. He was one of the best basketball players on the team at the time, so the coach insisted that he stay on the team to help coach the other players. He’s now the assistant coach, but he’s also the designated free throw shooter for injured players. When a player gets injured during a foul and can’t immediately shoot the foul shots, he rolls out to the foul line and takes the shots for the injured player. I’ve never missed a home game, and I’ve never seen him miss a shot. MMTToday, I paid my landlord back in full. Ten months ago I lost my job and couldn’t cover my rent for two months. Instead of putting my son and I on the streets, my landlord said, “You’ve been a good tenant for ten years and I know times are tough. Take your time, find another job, and pay me back as soon as you can.” MMTToday at 5AM, I asked an elderly man in the city where the nearest train stop was. He walked me to it and then waited next to me for 15 minutes. When the train finally arrived, he smiled and said, “Be safe out there, miss.” and then walked away without boarding the train. MMTToday, I was in a taxi on my way to work in Chicago when my blood glucose level suddenly dropped and I passed out. The taxi driver used all the tricks of his trade to get me to the hospital as quickly as possible. Apparently, he cut through a small park and drove over a median to get me there before it was too late. I know this because after I woke up, my nurse told me that my taxi driver “saved my life” and “physically carried me into the emergency room waiting area,” followed by a police officer who was after him for the said traffic violations. But then, my nurse said, “After the taxi driver explained himself, the police officer shook his hand and left.” MMTToday, two Orphan children (a boy and a girl) I used to care for years ago when they were teenagers are now married, are the owners of a successful marketing firm, own the home across the street from me, and have two beautiful children. And although I never officially adopted them, their two children call me ‘Grandma.’ MMTToday, I re-read the suicide letter I wrote on the afternoon of September 2nd 1996 about two minutes before my girlfriend showed up at my door and told me, “I’m pregnant.” She was honestly the only reason I didn’t follow through with it. Suddenly I felt I had a reason to live. Today she’s my wife. We’ve been happily married for 14 years. And my daughter, who is almost 15 now, has two younger brothers. I re-read my suicide letter from time to time as a reminder to be thankful – I am thankful I got a second chance. MMTToday, and every day for the last two months since I returned to school with burn scars on my face after being hospitalized for nearly a month for injuries I sustained in a house fire, a red rose was taped to my locker when I got to school in the morning. I have no clue who is getting to school early and leaving me these roses. I’ve even arrived early myself a few times to try to figure it out, but each time the rose was already there. MMTToday, as we were eating lunch at a diner my boyfriend leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek every few minutes when someone walked by. When I noticed what he was doing, I asked why. He said, “I want them to know you’re my girl.” We’re both in our mid-70’s and lost our spouses to cancer about 10 years ago. Second chances at love MMT.Today, my sister, who has Down Syndrome, followed through with her plan to sing at the school talent show. She’s been practicing her song diligently every afternoon for the last month, but it still worried me. I was terrified by the thought of how the students in the audience would respond to her. I just felt like there was a strong chance they would be mean. But they weren’t. In fact, she was the only act that received a standing ovation the entire night. MMTToday, two years after I was told I would never walk again, I got up out of my wheelchair and took my first few unassisted steps into my wife’s arms. MMTToday, one of my regular customers, an elderly man who has been eating in our diner every morning for the better part of 5 years, left me $500 in cash for his $7 breakfast. With the money, he left a small note that said, “Thank you, Cheryl. Your smile and hospitable service over the years gave me something to look forward to every morning after my wife passed. I’m moving to Long Island this evening to live with my son and his family. May the rest of your life be magical.” MMTToday, I unbuckled my seatbelt (I’m passionate about wearing my seatbelt) for two seconds so I could reach a printed map and directions sitting on the other side of the passenger seat. Just as I leaned over to grab it, I hit a big bump in the road and then my windshield shattered as a steel pipe that was hanging on the work truck driving in front of me shot, like a missile, through my windshield and directly into the center of the driver’s seat. I slammed on the brakes and crawled out of the passenger door. The cops that arrived at the scene couldn’t believe it either – there was an 8 foot steel pipe embedded into the driver’s seat, and it didn’t touch me. MMTToday, one of the football players at our school (who stands about 6’5) broke out in tears of joy and exclaimed, “Dad!” as he ran into his father’s arms in the middle of our Algebra II class. His father just returned home from Afghanistan early and came over to the school to surprise his son. MMTToday, I am a corporate accountant for a privately held chain of restaurants in the mid west. Our company employs several hundred people. The economic downturn has had a noticeable effect on the number of customers eating in our restaurants, but not a single employee has been laid off. But what our employees don’t know is that the owner hasn’t written himself a paycheck in six straight months. MMTToday, I was sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich I made myself for lunch when an elderly couple pulled their car up under a nearby oak tree. They rolled down the windows and turned up some jazz music on the radio. Then the man got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door for the woman, took her hand and helped her out of her seat, guided her about ten feet away from the car, and they slow danced for the next half hour under the oak tree. MMTToday, I took a cab ride 16 blocks in Manhattan and when I got to my destination I realized I forgot my wallet at home. As I fumbled through my purse, trying to explain things to the cab driver and scrounge up enough cash, a man walked up behind me and handed me a $50 bill. “Thank you!” I said. “Let me have your address. I will pay you back.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out an old receipt and wrote down an address. “You can drop off my money here,” he said. This afternoon I went to the address he gave me and found myself standing in front of a soup kitchen that had a sign out front that said, “Accepting cash donations to feed the hungry.” I walked in and donated the $50. MMTToday, I’m a 3rd shift IT guy for a finance company in NYC. This evening I was updating our VPN server at 3AM when I noticed an employee was actively logged in. I got suspicious and I accessed their account on the backend to see what they were doing. They had just sent a suicide note in an email entitled “Thank you and goodbye.” I immediately looked up their home address in our corporate directory and called 911. This person’s son called me at 7AM, just before I got off my shift, to thank me and inform me that his mother is in stable condition in the hospital. MMTToday was the 10 year anniversary of my dad’s passing. When I was a kid he used to hum a short melody to me as I was going to sleep. When I was 18, as he rested in his hospital bed fighting cancer, the roles were reversed and I hummed the melody to him. I haven’t heard that melody since and almost completely forgot about it until last night. My fiancé and I were lying in bed. We were turned on our sides looking at each other when he started humming the melody to me. He said his mom used to hum it to him when he was a kid. MMTToday, after my dad ran out of options to come up with enough money to pay our mortgage he decided to sell his pristine 1969 Camaro that he restored and has babied for as long as I can remember. A wealthy local collector came to look at it this afternoon. When he realized how passionate my dad was about the car, he asked, “Why are you selling it?” My dad told him and then the collector handed my dad cash for the car and said, “Here’s $5k in cash. I have the rest in my trunk. I’ll be right back.” The collector walked out our front door, got in his car and drove away. MMTToday, my little brother’s internet start-up was purchased for $12,000,000. My brother is 17 years younger than me. Our parent’s passed away in a car accident while I was babysitting him 17 years ago. I was 18 at the time and he was 1. I took legal guardianship of him and worked two jobs for 16 years to make sure he had every opportunity in the world. He started his company at 18 just after he graduated high school. It took off like wildfire. This evening, he transferred $1,000,000 into my retirement savings account. MMTToday, a young teenage boy was in line in front of me at Target. He used a gift card to buy two video games. The cashier, an older woman probably in her late 60’s, rang him up and informed him that he had $12 remaining on his gift card. “Oh, wait then,” he said as he ran two isles over and grabbed a $10 bouquet of flowers. As the cashier added the flowers to his order the boy handed them to her and said, “These are for you.” The cashier could not wipe the smile off her face, even after he left. MMTToday, it’s been almost four months since my son’s seven-year-old dog, Grover, got lost at a crowded fair on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida. We were on a family vacation visiting my husband’s parents. We searched for him everywhere, put up flyers all over the city - the whole nine yards. Nothing. My son was devastated. This afternoon, Grover showed up at our front door in Austin, Texas all by himself. MMTToday, a woman in my line at McDonald’s noticed the uniformed Marine in line behind her, and when she handed me $20 to pay for her meal, she said, “Keep the extra $12 and use it to pay for the Marine’s meal.” When the Marine got up to the counter and ordered his food, I informed him that it was already paid for by another customer. He stared at me for a second, then turned his head and glanced out the front window, handed me his cash anyway and said, “Okay, make it two #4 meals then.” On the way out of the restaurant he handed the second meal to a homeless man who was resting on the sidewalk. MMTToday, losing my infant son was the worst pain I have ever felt. But the phone call I just received from the doctor telling me my baby’s organs instantly saved two other baby’s lives MMT.Today, my father found my little sister alive, chained up in a barn. She was abducted near Mexico City almost 5 months ago. Authorities stopped actively searching for her a few weeks later. My mother and I laid her soul to rest. We even had a funeral for her last month. All of our family and friends attended the ceremony except my father. He swore she was still alive. He looked for her all day, every day since she disappeared. And she’s back home now because he never gave up. MMTToday, I walked my daughter down the aisle. Ten years ago I pulled a 14 year old boy out of his mom’s fire-engulfed SUV after a serious accident. Doctors initially said he would never walk again. My daughter came with me several times to visit him at the hospital. Then she started going on her own. Today, seeing him defy the odds and smile widely, standing on his own two feet at the altar as he placed a ring on my daughter’s finger MMT.Today, due to Alzheimer’s and dementia, my grandfather usually can’t remember who my grandmother is when he wakes up in the morning. It bothered my grandmother a year ago when it first happened, but now she’s fully supportive of his condition. In fact, she plays a game every day in which she tries to get my grandfather to ask her to re-marry him before dinnertime. She hasn’t failed yet. MMTToday, at 4PM I pulled over to help a man (who turned out to be a paramedic) push his car out of the road. After looking under the hood for a few minutes we both agreed his radiator needed to be replaced. He told me he was running late to work, so I used my AAA card to get him a free tow and ride to a repair shop next to the hospital. Exactly an hour later I called 911 when my son’s best friend fainted and stopped breathing after an asthma attack. The same paramedic, Jake, showed up at my house, performed CPR on my son’s friend until he was breathing again, and took him to the hospital. MMTToday, it’s been 10 years that our office janitor/maintenance man has been working at our company. Ever since he started, even as our small company grew from 12 people (when I started) to 118, he has given a small gift and card to every single one of his coworkers on their birthday. I actually just received my 10th gift and card from him last week. Today, for his birthday, the owner and CEO gave him a $25,000 bonus and threw him an after-work party. MMT“Today is your funeral,” my mother said to me over the phone as she cried hysterically from joy. I’ve been MIA overseas for the last few months after a mission I can’t speak about backfired. I was rescued this morning – the day of my funeral. MMTToday, I came across a Facebook page with 89 fans that’s dedicated to making fun of a kid at my school. It made me sick to my stomach. So I wrote this on the page’s wall: “Read your cruel words, and then get up and look in the mirror, all of you! And say, ‘I like torturing others! I am proud of myself!’” I just checked the Facebook page again, about 7 hours later. No one responded to my post. But the page now has 26 fans. MMTToday, I was sitting on the subway, exhausted, in a horrible mood. Lately I just haven’t been happy. I’ve been struggling with my weight, my job, and life in general. About 15 minutes into the subway ride, the elderly lady across from me got up, moved next to me, and said, “You’re beautiful. I’m not joking. I was thinking it, and I wanted you to know.” I smiled, thanked her and asked, “Do you usually complement strangers?” “When I was your age, a woman my age sat next to me on a train. Her compliments saved me from doing something stupid. And today, I’m returning the favor.” MMTToday, I operated on a little girl that was in a car accident. She desperately needed O- blood, which is a bit rare. We didn’t have any available, but her twin brother was at the hospital who had O- blood. I explained to him that it was a matter of life and death – that his sister needed his blood. He sat quietly for a moment, and then said goodbye to his parents. I didn’t think anything of it until after we took the blood we needed and he asked, “So when will I die?” He thought he was giving his life for hers. Thankfully, they’ll both be fine. MMTToday at the beach, I ran into my old boyfriend from high school who I haven’t seen in 8 years. We broke up because his dad was in the military and had to move to the east coast. They moved away during our junior year in high school, and we kept in touch for awhile, but eventually lost touch. I recognized him from a distance because he was wearing a tye-dye shirt we made together for a summer beach party when we were sophomores. The kicker: I was wearing my matching tye-dye shirt, which I haven’t worn in years. We hung out the entire day and have a date this evening. MMTToday, my son turned 7 and I turned 23. Yes, I had him on the day I turned 16. The choices I made when I was a teenager were foolish, and sometimes I get worried I’m bringing my son up wrong. But today I took him to the park to celebrate our birthdays. He played for hours with a girl who has burn scars that cover most of her face. When my son took a break to eat, he pointed to her and said, “She’s so pretty and cool!” Which left me thinking, “I must be doing something right as a mom.” MMTToday at 1AM, my grandma, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, got up, got into my dad’s car and drove off. We contacted the police. But before the police could find her, two college kids pulled into our driveway with my grandma. One was driving my dad’s car and the other was following in their car. They said they overheard her crying about being lost at an empty gas station 10 miles away. My grandma couldn’t remember our address, but gave the kids her first and last name. They looked her up online, found our address, and drove her home. MMTToday, a young woman and her toddler knocked on my door. The woman stared at me in silence for a second and then smiled and said, “I was just visiting the area and I couldn’t help but look-up your address. Your son carried me out of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 before he went back inside to save others. I think about you and your family almost every single day.” MMTToday, I met the prettiest woman on an airplane. After some small talk, and under the assumption that I wouldn’t see her again after we made our connections in Atlanta, I told her how pretty I thought she was. She gave me the most sincere smile and said, “Nobody has said that to me in 10 years.” It turns out we’re both in our mid-30’s, never married, no kids, and we live about 5 miles away from each other in Dallas. We have a date set for next Saturday after we return home. MMTToday, the only reason I’m alive is because of my little brother. 7 years ago I swallowed a bottle of prescription pain killers. No more than 30 seconds later my brother called me from Iraq and told me how much he hates it there and that the only thing keeping him going is knowing that in a few months he’ll be back home hanging with his favorite person – me. I vomited up the pills and never told a soul. My brother and I are now roommates. MMTToday, because of my older brother, I’m a high school grad, I’m healthy and I’m alive. I’m 18 and my brother is 29. When we were 7 and 18, he got an apartment of his own on the good side of town and moved us out of the crack house our late drug addicted mother was living in. He worked 2 jobs to pay the bills and always made sure I was safe, fed and at school on time. He basically saved my life. MMTToday, as I was sleeping, I woke up to my daughter calling my name. I was sleeping in a sofa chair in her hospital room. I opened my eyes to her beautiful smile. My daughter has been in a coma for 98 days. MMTToday, through extensive charity work, we helped move a street family that has never lived in a house or slept on a clean bed into a house of their own. As he stared around his new bedroom in awe, the youngest boy in the family exclaimed, “I have a bed! My own bed! My very own bed!” MMTToday, at 8AM this morning, after four months of lifelessness in her hospital bed, we took my mom off life support. And her heart continued beating on its own. And she continued breathing on her own. Then this evening, when I squeezed her hand three times, she squeezed back three times. MMTToday, my 8-year-old son hugged me and said, “You are the best mom in the whole entire world!” I smiled and sarcastically replied, “How do you know that? You haven’t met every mom in the whole entire world.” My son squeezed me tighter and said, “Yes I have. You are my world.” MMTSource: 99 Tiny Stories to Make You Think, Smile and Cry

How I have dealt with my executive function difficulties.By Jan Fargo responding to request from Helen Wolf on Quora.When I was very little, it was my parent’s constant prodding and reminders to stick to the task at hand that kept me on track.In school we were taught to focus on one thing at a time. Commands like: ‘Put away your spellers and take out your arithmetic books’, helped us focus on the current subject.On my own I learned the value of physical order and organization during free drawing time in grade school. We had very tiny desks with little space to spread out our work, and I became annoyed with myself for constantly misplacing my crayons, ruler, pencil, eraser. So I learned to force myself to always put these items back into the same place I had taken them from, even when I thought I was going to use them again in the next minute. This principle has carried over into adult life, into office work and into managing and running a household, but it has never become completely internalized. Even today, I still have to do a lot of self-talk or nagging to keep myself on the track of orderliness.While I was in grade school, my parents had three more children who were at home playing all day long, making a mess of things every day. Every evening, when it was time for my father to come home, mother said, ‘Put away all the toys! Get ready for dinner! You father will be home soon!’Being so much younger, they had no clue how to tackle the gargantuan mess they had created all day long, so I helped them out. I figured out that it was important to first put away the largest items, like tricycles, Tonka trucks, card tables and chairs. Next came dolls and stuffed animals placed into their own special bin, then the children’s books on their own shelf. Then we would focus on one single construction set at a time. Collect all the Lincoln Logs and put them into their own dedicated box, next gather and box up all the Logstix, then the Legos, and so on. At that time Legos only had red, white, and clear Lego bricks for windows, and we could only build buildings with them. In this way we quickly and easily restored order to the playroom.The principle of clearing the largest most visible items first came in handy after we moved to a house that did not have a playroom. My dad often worked Saturdays and he demanded neatness and order when he came home. In addition to dusting, vacuuming, and washing the floors, our rooms had to be spick and span. Considering that we had been playing in them all day, this was quite a feat. Again we learned to make the bed first. Clear the desk tops and table tops of clutter. If there was not time to carefully sort and box the small items, at least cover the clutter up or sweep it all into a box or drawer where it could not be seen.Somewhere along the way I learned how much easier it was to find and keep clothes and underwear available when they were organized by weight, sleeve length, and color.Unfortunately, I did not receive as much support for keeping track of papers, like my homework, my finished assignments, or my special papers, photos, postcards, and other mementoes I liked to hoard. No one showed me how to organize and keep track of my papers. No one provided me with appropriate storage space and file boxes for my archives. My homework was always lost. My cherished Life Magazine photo essays quickly got tattered and torn as I shifted them from place to place to avoid my father’s wrath. Whenever I found a discarded cardboard box that was the right size for some of my treasures, I gleefully co-opted it for my use, but there was never enough, and I had lost most of my treasures by college.It was only as an adult, while I was temping in various offices that I became aware of the availability of file cabinets, hanging file folders, file boxes, folders, index card boxes and the like. It was even later when I discovered office supply stores where I could buy these items. During many frequent moves and placing items into storage, I learned the value of using uniform size boxes that stack well together. Later I discovered moving suppliers where I could buy what I needed instead of hoping for lucky finds behind the store.Those are some of the ways I deal with physical organization. The mental organization is much more challenging and I have never been satisfied with my handling of it. A typical example is my tardiness in answering your A2A. I actually started my reply weeks ago, when your request for response appeared in my feed, but I have not been able to complete the response yet.One main cause of the delay is my lack of time organization. I have come to realize that I need to SCHEDULE time for special projects like this one, but I seldom have any schedule at all.Secondly, I am so impaired in my keyboarding, that it takes me about three times as long to type out a given paper than it takes a typical person. So, even If I have scheduled and allowed time to do the work, it is never enough time on the first, second, or third attempts.I often cannot and do not schedule time, or enough time, for special projects like this one because my Activities of Daily Living take up more time than my waking hours in the day. If I cook three meals a day, which is my preference because of economy and diet considerations, there is no time left for cleaning, shopping or answering emails. Whenever I have responded promptly to emails and questions on Quora, the time has been stolen from household chores or from sleeping time. I have spent many nights up until 3 or 4 AM reading and answering Quora.Right now I am typing this part of the response instead of doing my ‘setup’ of my weekly supplements. Because I take a large number of supplements every day which help my brain and nervous system function better, I find it efficient to have them all counted out and placed into three containers for each day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This saves time and effort every day, but at the end of the week I need to set aside over an hour to do the setup again for the following week.A third cause of my delays in performing desired or required tasks is a limit in my energy and my endurance, both physical and mental. Housework and daily living tasks are so boring, I have to do them first thing in the morning while I am still energized. Even with an early start, I usually cannot get them done in a reasonable amount of time, so then I cheat myself of exercise and recreation. I skip my walk, I skip my swim, I skip my aerobics class, I skip my discussion groups, I skip my music practice, I skip my arithmetic practice, I skip doing art, I skip singing. Consequently, I become very bored, depressed, and lethargic.Physically, I have difficulty with fine motor activities, so I cannot do needlework, mending, keyboarding, or piano playing, to name a few, efficiently. My fingers, arms and shoulders become stiff and cramped, and my results are so far below par that they are completely unacceptable, even to me, so that I tend to avoid such activities altogether. An illustration: when I was a little girl, my mother tried to teach me to darn socks. After I had darned a sock, no one could wear it! When I was taking piano lessons, even I could not stand the noise of my practicing!Most housework requires standing in one place for long periods of time. Again, this impacts my joints and muscles which have a condition that does not tolerate stress, weight, impact, and repetitive motion.Working on the computer, whether composing or answering emails likewise is very bad for my body, with the addition of the negative effects of sitting. Yes, I did finally get a standing desk, but again, it becomes stressful on my knees, hips, and back.Living with a loved one who has even worse difficulties than I have, I have come to realize that the things I do well, and efficiently, and regularly enough to be of positive value in my life are all things I was forced to do and to practice and to repeat at an early age, so that they became ingrained into my nervous system and my muscle memory and my internal calendar. My partner was given much less encouragement and practice and consequently lacks many basic skills.The activities which I tried once, or which someone once tried to teach me once but gave up after one failed attempt are the activities I have never mastered or taken a liking to. Even lengthy exposure, when not first introduced properly for my mind type has not given me the desired skills or knowledge.I will tell you two stories of abilities I acquired on my own in adulthood. These two instances prove to me that the problem is not with my dense brain or slow reflexes, but rather with the lack of caring, patience, and follow- through I have met in most life situations, even in classes and coaching.If you feel these stories are too long or too distracting from the main topic, please feel free to remove them from your publication or to use them independently elsewhere.The first story is about arithmetic.For various reasons, circumstances, and conditions, including illness, listening and hearing difficulties, and uncorrected near-sightedness, I never received the usual, normal introductions to arithmetic either at home or in pre-school. Because of this lack of preparation compounded by the pre-existing conditions, I never ‘got’ the arithmetic that was taught in the first three or four grades.In addition, I was out of school with an illness when multiplication was introduced. No one bothered to get me caught up. I simply came back to class, sat down, opened the workbook, and wondered what those x’s meant. I wish I had kept track of how long I simply added the numbers before someone noticed and realized what I was doing instead of multiplication! In spite of daily classroom drills in which the whole class recited tables over and over again, I never did learn the multiplication tables. When I graduated from eighth grade, I was still counting on my fingers, and adding up to get the sum of multiplication problems. Fractions completely eluded me.In high school I flunked geometry and algebra, so they did not allow me to take algebra ll. I tried to make up the deficiency by signing up for summer school and was ASKED TO LEAVE BECAUSE I WAS HOLDING BACK THE CLASS! Therefore, I could not take high school trigonometry, or chemistry, or physics. Technically, I should not have been graduated from high school, but they had me make up the extra units by taking two years of a second language.Because of my high IQ scores, my parents and my teachers were bound and determined that I must go to college, so they dissuaded me from taking any practical business courses, not even typing! How many nights of sleep I lost in college sitting up and typing by the ‘hunt and peck’ method so I could slide the already due paper under the prof’s door at the crack of dawn!And why did I have these IQ tests administered to me? Because ‘they’ were trying to understand why I was not ‘getting’ arithmetic. Then when my scores came in so high I was blamed for being lazy, for not caring, for not trying, for not doing my homework, for not listening in class! “If only she would . . . . . .” was the unending refrain. There was no concept at that time of what we today call ‘Twice Exceptional’ or 2E, being gifted and yet having a learning disability.With my lack of math or science background, I could not enter a real state college science program, so I went to a small, private, women’s college with a very limited liberal arts curriculum. The college was located near a military base and the understanding was that we were only there to earn our ‘Mrs.’ Degrees! The three ‘science’ courses I received were lecture courses in astronomy, geography, and physical anthropology! There was absolutely no math or even arithmetic involved.When I ‘graduated’ from this college, I was unemployable. Although I had majored in English and American Literature, I could not teach high school without a Master’s degree in my field. Because of my abysmal track record in education, I certainly was not going into graduate school. So, I tried to find a job in the ‘real’ world.As I searched and interviewed for jobs there were two refrains that were used to disqualify me from every position for which I applied.1. “How fast do you type, dear? You don’t type? That’s a shame. We always need good secretaries.”OR2. “You are too highly educated with your B.A. in liberal arts. We cannot hire you to be a file clerk. You would get bored!”By the end of summer I was desperate. Then someone told me that private schools operating on limited budgets often employed young persons with only a bachelor’s degree. So I applied at our local parochial school and was hired to teach third grade. Of course I knew nothing of real teaching methods. I simply followed the teacher’s guides and my memory of how I was taught at that grade. In the course of attempting to teach these children arithmetic, I became more aware of some of the ‘number facts’ and addition combinations. I even internalized most of the times tables!The following summer in this city there was a teacher shortage, and a special program was initiated to bring adults with bachelor’s degrees into the profession. There were special classes at night and in the summer through which we would earn a standard lifetime teaching credential. Because teaching in the public schools would pay me twice much at the start as did the private school, I jumped at the opportunity.We were taught the history, philosophy and methods of every subject that might be taught from kindergarten through adult. Everything went well for me until the last set of courses. There was a course I had avoided and put off until the last: Methods of Teaching Modern Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers!I was terrified. I had worked diligently and succeeded at every previous course, but I knew I would not be able to pass this one. I could barely do ‘regular’ arithmetic counting on my fingers! How on earth would I do this thing called “Modern Math”? Many of my fellow classmates were similarly terrified. In fact, several of them dropped out of the class.In this class we were taught things I had never heard of, like number theory, number lines, set theory and Venn diagrams, but to my surprise, I understood and enjoyed it all! In fact, I received an ‘A’.After the course was finished, I stayed after and spoke to the professor. I told him my sad story of disability with arithmetic and being ostracized for my failures. I asked him how it was possible that I, the arithmetic dropout could have aced his class. His answer was, “In grade school they were just teaching you arithmetic, which even machines can do. But I was teaching you mathematics, which only the human mind can comprehend!”Years later I was relating this story to a fellow hiker who said: “Of course! I know that professor. I was in his classes. He was the best mathematics professor on campus!”And more years after that, as I was reading and researching to understand my mind, my disabilities, and my failures in life, I read a book titled: In The Mind’s Eye by Thomas G. West https://www.amazon.com/Minds-Eye-Thinkers-Difficulties-Creativity/dp/1573921556.In this book I learned that many successful persons like Ford, Edison, Tesla, had difficulties with schooling and even math. Yet several of them were discovered and helped by some kindly mentor who introduced them to science and higher maths where they eventually made their great contributions.After my success in the course in Modern Math for Elementary Teachers, I had briefly contemplated returning to school and making another try at math, but my need for steady income was greater because I was desperate to escape from my parents’ domination.Off and on over the years I have tried to take remedial courses and tutoring in arithmetic, but have always hit the same two obstacles:1.Either the school, in this case a local community college, repeatedly refuses me appropriate accommodations, not even a quiet study space that I need for my Attention Deficit,OR2.The tutors just want to run me through a bunch of work sheets instead of working on developing the mathematical concepts I missed out on in early childhood and they want to move on as soon as I got a particular type of problem correct once, instead of giving me the tons of practice I need on basics to fix them in my mind.This inability to make up my deficit in math has made me very sad and angry, because I know from my success in the course in Modern Math that I do have the mental capacity to learn and do math, and I know from reading the book In the Mind’s Eye that even geniuses needed some help getting started in their fields of success.My second story concerns volleyball.The same factors that kept me from a normal exposure to and familiarity with the basics of arithmetic kept me from developing any skill at any schoolyard games, particularly ball games. Physical education was the all too common fiasco in which children who were way too young were lined up to pitch, catch, and bat a ball. The few who already had some exposure and practice continued to practice and play and enjoy the game and choose their fellow precocious classmates for their teams, while the rest of us just stood around or ‘walked.’Volleyball seemed different. There was more individual involvement. You had an equal chance of hitting the ball or of being hit by it, but the game was not boring like baseball. Still, even here, the taller, stronger, more developed and more coordinated ones ruled, and clumsy klutzes like me were chosen last because we missed the ball too often.In addition, there was the social factor. Because most classmates had developed a network of friendships and alliances which socially lost aspie me was left out of, there was another reason I did not get chosen for the teams and therefore did not get enough practice to improve my skills.So it went all through high school and college. A few years after graduation, bored with being a stay-at-home mom, I discovered a series of volleyball clinics at the local Parks and Recreation. They were three days a week. Each day focused on a different skill. Tuesdays were serving, Wednesdays were setting, Thursdays were spiking. The first hour we each and all took turns practicing nothing but the skill of the day. No one sat out. Everyone received an equal number of turns. The second hour we played a very slow, low level game, because we were all rank beginners.Towards the end of the semester course, during the second hour of free play, the coaches began to introduce us to more experienced players who would take the opposite court from us. At first these games were rather brutal for our class, but we began to apply what we had learned and slowly improved our odds.The day I realized taking this class had been a very good choice for me, we were in a game against some very aggressive hitters. Whenever we sent the ball over to their side, they returned it, blazing like a meteor, barely over my head, too fast for me to stop it, too low for the one behind me to pick it up. This happened several times when suddenly what we had been practicing was activated in my brain. Without a thought, I jumped up and hit the ball with both fists directly into their faces, two or three times in a row, before they realized they had better aim their fire elsewhere. My moment of triumph came as I heard one of the hard hitters mutter: “I thought she couldn’t do anything!”Now, I did not go on to join the Olympic volleyball team. I did not even sign up for more games, because of my weak knees which would not let me keep jumping like that, but it was such a great feeling to be one of the good players for a change.The message from my experience in the Modern Math class, and in the volleyball clinic is that even someone like me who seems at first to be slow, retarded, and disabled in many areas can shine when given enough support. Sadly, I have not had enough support in most areas of my life.I perceive that the persons of whatever diagnosis who have executive function difficulties simply need more and different support than they have received so far. If I had received proper oversight and supervision with my arithmetic homework, I would eventually have learned the arithmetic, as well as how to study and how to organize my papers. If my partner had been given as many opportunities to practice basic household maintenance as I have had, I would not have to be the guide, the coach, the mentor for every little chore. If I had been shown how the world works, and how people collaborate and get things done, I could have made some great achievements.I feel sick when I read the stories of the painters without hands and the dancers missing a leg and the blind mountaineer who did Everest. All of these people had entire teams supporting them in every aspect of their journey.I usually cannot get all my daily chores done in a day. I have to steal time from chores and from sleep to read Quora and write answers like this one.No, I have not overcome my difficulties with executive function. I just have more practice at ignoring the pain of doing boring things all day which leave no time for recreation or creativity.Executive function is like our appetite for food. We are given appetite and hunger so we will feed ourselves and not starve. But if there is no good-tasting food available, we might eat a lot less or none at all. When there is nothing interesting to do, we might choose to do nothing.When people complain about poor executive function in their spectrumite children or spouses or workers, they need to realize that you are asking them every day to eat gruel, like Oliver Twist and the orphans. You are asking them to eat soggy cardboard. You are asking them to swallow dry crackers. How hungry would you have to be before you would eat a raw worm, or a spider, or something slimy from the bottom of the well?Have you considered how traumatic it is to be rushed through activity after activity from the moment you wake up, with no time to yourself? No time to do anything you care about?You say they should do their chores and homework faster and more efficiently. Well, after seven decades of practice, I am pretty efficient at lots of household chores, and if I were to do everything I am supposed to do, I could never take a walk or read Quora, to give two examples.We cannot be rushed. We need to learn and do at our own pace. Over time we may become more efficient and effective at certain activities. But to get there, you need to wake us up three hours before time to leave the house, because we are not going to learn how to do things right when we are constantly being rushed and hurried.The real problem with executive function is that we do not allow the children or persons to do those things for which they have an appetite, for which they have will and desire, for which they have plenty of executive energy.The real problem is this contemporary lifestyle, this frantic, rushed, consumeristic, driven frenzy in which the only good person is a busy and productive person, a consumer, a doer, a collector of things, an accumulator of experiences.There is too much to do. There is too much to do that is artificial and arbitrary and driven by greed and competition.We need a simple lifestyle. When I was little, I wanted to run away and live with the Indians. I did not want to ride in a car when I could walk. I did not want to go to the movies when I could read a book. I did not want to listen to the record player when I could sing. I did not want to mow the lawn and throw away the grass clippings when I could have planted vegetables to eat. And so on.People like to bring bread to the ducks in the pond. The ducks eat it because they are greedy and hungry and it is available right there. But the bread is not good for them. That is why these days we are requested to please not feed the ducks. But before those laws were made and those signs were put up, I used to bring the ducks snails I had collected in my garden. You should have seen those ducks come swarming over and gobbling them up! Ten times faster than how they ate the bread!If you could only look at your life and your world with the eyes of one of us, you would see that 90% of what we make ourselves and our children do is worthless. The little Ugly Ducklings do not need bread, they need snails and frogs and water plants to eat!Try giving them some snails for a change and watch them gobble them up! There is nothing wrong with their appetites after all. Better yet, turn them loose in the pond and see what they do. There is nothing wrong with their will, with their executive function. They just need real, and interesting and important things to do.Thanks for the A2A, Helen Wolf.23.9 KB 9 pages 4509 words 382 minutes editingMic����)�