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Originally answered: “What do people in Pakistan think of Hinduism?”*Long answer, talking about Hinduism from a Pakistani perspective. Feel free to ignore.*Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is man.An Essay on Man, Epistle II. Alexander Pope.All faiths are manifestations of the human experience around them.When the Mesopotamians settled the banks of the Euphrates, they were victims to its erratic flooding and unpredictable weather that could unexpectedly kill those who lived, farmed and watered their cattle on its shores.So the Mesopotamians assumed the Gods were cruel and capricious, their minds forever murky pools. As unknowable and mysterious as the dark waters of the Euphrates.When the Egyptians settled the Nile, they were blessed by its seasonal floods that were easy to foresee. Floods that killed few and were easily managed, and left behind the rich dark soil of the Nile Deltas that could be used for farming and plentiful food.So the Egyptians assumed the Gods were gentle and kind and their minds were formed on order and rules. And they had only to fulfill those orders and rules and life would be good, life would treat them well.Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss,The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,But all these in thir pregnant causes mixtBook 2, Paradise Lost - John MiltonIslam and Hinduism are no different.If you read the Upanishads, you can hear the slow lazy waters of the Ganges in it. The rich, game filled forests of the South. The mist and humid waters of the inner jungles, water hanging from the edges of leaves, the fires in a tiger’s eyes. You see endless fields of green, stone temples that 5 generations of your family have built over time. You feel the crevices of each stone in your fingers, the cool touch of their stairs under your feet, how the temple idols lit under the candles placed before them.If you read the Quran, you hear the crackle of the fires lit by Bedouins in the desert night to keep warm. The swirling winds of a dust dervish. You feel the thirst in your mouth, you feel the vulnerability of life in the desert. You feel how important and urgent your social structures are, as they are the delicate artifice on which all life is built in the desert of scarcity. You feel the sting of the slap from your father for breaking a rule of the caravan. But you understand: Life is hard here. And you need to toughen up to survive. Mistakes are not easily forgiven. Not when the food is scarce and the water elusive.The warmth of the caravan is your only assurance at life in the cold dark desert. You gaze up at the night sky, filled with wonders of the universe, in a time when no city lights hid the arms of the milky way. And you wonder at the mystery of life, what your place in the world is.Both faiths are the manifestations of the human experiences that gave birth to them.Each of us gives birth to our Gods that, in return, give birth to the universes that give birth to us. In the cyclical nature of consciousness defining itself.Drink the milk of the holy mother cow, and you will be bestowed with the secret magics of the divine, according to Hindu mystics wiped out by the first invasions.Eat the flesh of animals, balanced with a plant diet and you will maintain the pure balance between aggression and rationality, according to Punjabi Muslim scholars of the 1800s.Our bodies, our beings, manifest the faith which itself is manifested by how the body experiences the world around it.What are the roots that clutch, what branches growOut of this stony rubbish? Son of man,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,And the dry stone no sound of water. OnlyThere is shadow under this red rock,(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust.The Wasteland, T.S. ElliotIf you feel Islam has a harsh structure or rigidity to it, it’s because the faith was borne in circumstances that required it.When you begin with a call to reject all idols in favor of one God and the pagans drive you from your homes to starve in the outskirts of the city, die under torture, flee across the city to Christian refuges and finally to the city of Madina, you realize how lonely you are in your fight. When the thin spider’s web is all that stands between you and your hunters, in some lost cave in Arabia, you realize your life was never your own to begin with. And that all men are at the mercy of mercurial, unknowable forces that grant mercy as easily as they grant death.When you step out of the ranks of your men, hot sand burning the skin beneath your feet, the Quraishi champion swords man, who you called brother just a year ago, challenging you to fight to the death: You wonder at your journey in life and how strange it has been and how uncertain the tides of your life are. And you hope and pray that your decisions were the right ones.When you stand in phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, with men who share no blood or tribe with you, staring down the Meccan cavalry charging at you, you realize the meaning of brotherhood. And what it means to form a community with men who share nothing with you except your faith and your ideals.When you stand before your Caliph as he declares war on the 2 superpowers of the world simultaneously, you realize what it means to throw yourself into the maelstrom of violence and constant war, without knowing whether you will win. Without knowing whether you would return home. Only that you took vows and if this is to be the end of your life, then so be it.You have lived under the shadow of death your entire life, in the desert. Where the water was scarce, the food uncertain. Where mistakes meant the end of your lives. The rigid structure and rules of life in the desert are what let you survive.You learn to give mercy where your enemies submit but to give none when they fight. Because the oasis can only quench so many thirsts. And the scarce desert can only feed so many. And so it was either us or them in war.All the verses in the Quran are reflections of life in the desert. Where life is harsh, the living is tough and rigid rules and structure and discipline must be followed if you are to survive and if your tribe is to survive.But all the beauties and mysteries of that life are also present in it. The poetry of suffering and hope, the magic looking up at a night sky and seeing the entirety of creation before you. Watching dust devils swirl in their frenzy in the vast emptiness of the desert, reminding you of your mortality. Mirages on the horizon, filled with the lies of water. But every once in a while, a small miracle happens. And you chance upon a sanctuary. Of cool water and shades under palm trees. Your hot skin hisses as the water hits it. You hear the laughter of your caravan and the voices speaking out in pleasure at the certainty of life, for today at least.And you imagine this is what heaven must be like.Only long years later, as you live in the opulence of conquered Persia, surrounded by berries, slave girls and water puddles do you forget what it felt like. The hot sand beneath your feet. The scorpions trek across fine sand. The discipline you had to endure to survive the heat. How you had to give up your food for a guest and go hungry for the night, because that was the custom of the desert.Nasser AlOthman’s photo of the Milky Way over the Arabian Desert.Source: Can you describe the stars in the skyHe took me by the hand and made me kneel;he took my wife by the hand and made her kneel.The god then touched our foreheads, blessing us,and said: 'You were but human; now you areadmitted into the company of gods.Your dwelling place shall be the Faraway,the place which is the source of the outflowingof all the rivers of the world there are.'The Epic of GilgameshAs it is with Islam, so it is with Hinduism.The ecologies of the land shape our experiences in life and thus, shape the faiths that we develop to adhere by them.In the water rich, fertile lands of the Indus Valley, the Ganges banks and the tropics of the Indian subcontinent, life was easier than the desert. There was game in the forests, the branches hung low with fruits, the soil was rich for farming, rivers filled with life and water was everywhere.There was no Oasis where only one could survive.So if your neighbor worshiped Ganesh and you worshiped Hanuman, a co-existence could be achieved.The large population masses and farming based society meant hierarchies had to be established so each had his role to play.But even these were fluid, and movements in South India arose over and over to reform the faith and and ensure its continuous evolution over the ages.Where there was no scarcity, the land could afford to host everyone’s God.The tolerance in the old faith extended not only to divinity but the products of it as well. In Devi’s temples, a tolerance for human sexuality and the ability to redefine your idea of sexuality held sway. Even as it faded away in the old fertility goddess civilizations of the Indus, the Nile and the Euphrates.The swirling colors of the world mixed in the rain drops hanging from palm trees in the monsoon. Replicated in human customs like Holi festivals to celebrate the richness of the land and the joy of being born in the fertile cradle of the world.Rain drenched leaves in Kochi, India.Source: The World's most recently posted photos of india and raindropAs different as their cradles could have been, Islam and Hinduism had their commonalities where human experience intersects.Who among us could read about Arjuna’s grief and inner turmoil at facing his own brothers and family in battle and not see parallels with the Muslims of Medina, facing their fathers and brothers and sons in battle lines when the Meccan’s descended upon Medina for Badr.When families are torn apart over a war about values, the definition of justice and the struggle to define right and wrong. In a blood letting that pits brother against brother.Each unit made up often: ten soldierswhose leader reports to a unit of onehundred soldiers, whose leader reports to a unit of onethousand soldiers, whose leader reports to a unit often thousand.With iron logic he had raised the great structurefrom the flatinternecine earth(— abyss where absolute, necessarypoweris fettered, bewildered by something working within us,MUD IN THE VEINS, to paralyzedecision —; as well as by that necessarysweet daringthat leaps across the abyss to risk all, to correct and cripplepower, —... but then finds, in despair, it must try to master it).The Fourth Hour of the Night , By Frank BidartWhen Islam burst forth from Arabia in a madness of violence and righteous fury, it was in fact the desert that broke forth. Men who knew how to cross and fight in hot deserts with little water and plenty of hunger to bear.Zeal after all, has a quality of its own. And men intoxicated upon verses of divinity, raised in the hellish heat of the Arabian desert, unleashed their pent up fury upon the world now that they were a unified tribe.The strange thing is, the Caliphs had always foreseen that the purity and zeal of their faith would not be dampened by sin. But that as their warriors grew accustomed to the lifestyle and riches of a water-fat land, they would forget the old meaning of Islam.They would forget the thirst in their mouth, why they wrapped their faces during a sandstorm, why they treated their animals with kindness as they were their only mounts in the desert of death. They would spend too much too much time indoors, drinking wine and fucking slaves. And would forget what the night sky looked like. They would hire pretty singers to sing for them. And forget why they memorized hundreds of verses in poetry their ancestors passed down to them.You see, Islam’s half life begins when the desert is left behind. The further you are from it, the less Islam makes sense.You chaff at its rigidity and its rules, that were made for life in the scarce, hostile desert. You wince at its painful restrictions in lands where the pleasures of the flesh and alcohol flow freely.II. The Rio GrandeI grew into the silence of third person, a landscape,a mesa. I flew hard into the silence of gray smog,my chest burning, my throat dry with the songsof women with sagging faces, childrenstrapped to their bent backs.They have become a river metaphor, a border,a soulless chant to believers. Maquiladora workers slainand buried in shallow graves. My palms refuseto fold in prayer and god giggles in my red ears.Sand pecks my skin like a drum roll in the hot wind.The march of children, their backpacks plastic,the way they see color a mystery, a dance, the shapesof clouds, an elephant, a dove, a long-lost dog. They singsong their way past the factory-circus.Woman as a River Between BordersSo what happens when the desert meets the river?What always happens. Either the desert is flooded. Or the river dries across the endless sand. In this case, it was the latter.The irony of the Islamic forces reaching India is that the Arab ancestors, the Bedouins who began Islam: They always dreamed of a place like Kashmir when they struggled against the desert to live. When the sand burned under feet, they dreamed of a place with cool springs like Kashmir. When the sand whipped them across the face, they dreamed of a place with grass so green and soft that men could lie down on it right there and sleep on it. When their throats parched and their bellies rumbled with hunger, they dreamed of a place like Kashmir where no one would ever feel hunger and thirst again.If there was ever an idea of heaven, in the minds of the Arab men who began Islam, it was Kashmir. A land with cool air, clear waters, green grassy endless lands, mountains that touched the sky and water that fell from the heavens.I never saw the ocean until I was a man. And experiences like that break something inside you. Like when your parents die. Or when you lose your virginity. Or you murder someone. You feel a part of you has altered forever and there can no longer be a going back to who you were before.It must have been like that, seeing Kashmir for the first time. But alas, you may have left the desert but you still carry the desert inside you. And the armies acted as the desert had taught them to act with the burning of Kashmir and the atrocities of the earlier armies.The establishment of formal empires in the sub continent began the gradual acclimation of the new comers to the ecology of the land. In the rich sands of the Punjab, its mighty rivers and its monsoon rains began the mystical Sufi movements. Which drew in its own converts from the castes of old. A gentler Islam took root in the tropics of the south, where the mother earth welcomed all her children from afar.Who is immune from ruin by time?Each generation wearier than the one before;these days no one deigns to have childrenuntil they are "professionally secure."And the media waits long and long to warnthe idealists born during the baby-boomthat the future is also being sabotaged:undone by sluggish sperm; hardened wombs.The Desert of EmpireThe womb of our mothers shape us, and the womb of the world shapes us all.I have talked about how the human experience of the desert shaped Islam and how the human experience of the Tropics shaped Islam.And how these faiths define us as much as we define them.But we live in a new world now: Centuries later, two new nations stand upon the land. A new aspect or layer has been added to the ecology of the land: The ecology of technology.The loud speaker, the social media, the mass propaganda define the faiths in ways that the old attributes never could.A new kind of scarcity has taken a fever grip: the scarcity of capital, the scarcity of the modern economy.So that even if the land is plentiful enough to sustain all of us, our hearts aren’t.A new human experience will define the faith.Islam itself is in the turmoil of contradiction: A desert faith in a rich land. To most, there is no contradiction. And I congratulate them on the stability of their minds and lives.But men like me are torn. I read the verses and I taste the sand in my mouth. I do not understand the need for the rigidity and the discipline and the structure when I do not see the scarcity that gave birth to them. I do not see the need for the rigid laws of etiquette that were built to help you stay alive, surrounded by death in the sands, when all I do is sit in front of my computer with enough calories to last me a week in my fridge.This doesn’t stop me from appreciating the beautiful aspects of Islam. How the Quran repeatedly expresses its love for the stars and you know this was the book for men whose divinity was felt under the clear night sky in the lonely stretches of the desert.But who knows: I could be the idiot after all. As the water dries up in the land, and the desert encroaches upon the once fertile Punjab: Perhaps the faithful will have the last laugh at all and Islam will carry us over in the new era of Global warming and scarcity. Who knows, as the world heats up and vast continents turn to deserts, perhaps the Momin that I grew up laughing at will conquer the world as their faith is the only one capable of surviving in the tough, water stressed planet.Somewhere things are happening. Marvelous orangeand purple things. Flooding rivers at dusk, wheels threadingroads in the desert. Strangers. Strangers. Sea.Somewhere you are lying in a white bed. The clockon your thigh is ticking. Somewhere a human formis being lifted from the ground.Strangers, Christine GosnaySo if you ask me what I think of Hinduism, I will ask: “For whom?”For a farmer in the deep south? For a Civil servant in the North? For a Maoist political activist in Nepal? For a Bengali professor in Bangladesh? A Hindu student in Sindh? A convert in Canada?Can their sole experience define the entire faith?The doctrines of Christian love, suffering and sacrifice came from the Christian slaves huddled together in prayer in Roman Colosseum as Lions in the arena approached to tear them apart. The doctrines of a Father’s mercy, the mystery of the holy spirit, Christ’s redemption came from Gnostic meditating in caves, priests collecting scriptures in Churches, peasants listening to the gospel in villages.Yet, what they tried to convey through their experiences in scripture meant nothing to the Spanish conquistadors as they committed mass genocide in Latin America or the Dutch colonists who were chopping off children’s feet in Africa or the British colonists who were starving women and children in South Africa or the Bengal.I believe Hinduism is what it has always been: a constantly evolving body of ideals and beliefs, with innumerable schools of thought. In the old times, a river or a mountain marked the line between one belief in a region and the other.Now with the internet and mass media, men can define more standardized versions of the faith that form the mainstream. Something Muslims are all too familiar with during the Quranic standardization under the Arabic language by Caliph Usman and the Loud speaker Sunni conservatism that has gripped the land.It would be a tragedy if all the richness and diversity is lost to a dry uniformity under the grind of technological centralization. I know from my own experience as a Pakistani Muslim, the destruction wrought upon the cultural and artistic life of the land by such attempts.But I have always held out hope in the complexity of human beings, their thoughts, emotions and actions. How the complex interactions between humans on scale foil even the most sophisticated attempts at mass slavery under one authority.Someone always manages to bury the dead sea scrolls for them to be discovered centuries later. A heresy is always whispered somewhere in the dark. A radical monk always mediates his way to a new awakening in a cave somewhere. A candle always manages to be lit in the darkness.Were you hoping that I would bash Hinduism and make claims about its backwardness due to caste system or whatever?Or were you hoping that I’d gush over its tolerance and its popularity with White hippies?If so, sorry this answer strayed towards neither. My interaction with Hinduism is about as tortured and complex as the early Arab invaders when they touched the borders of the subcontinent.I struggled and eventually gave up trying to finish the Upanishads. I consider the Bhagavad Gita as one of the most impactful books I have read and still lovingly talk about it and its poetry to whomever cares to listen. I identified heavily with Arjuna’s complex, human like flaws and his struggles. They made him more real and identifiable to me than any ‘Superman-saint’ hybrid who is perfect in every way and people like me can barely relate to them.I grew up in the centerfold of Islamic ideology and Pakistani nationalism. Yet my closest friend is a Hindu, one with whom I’ve shared struggles that even my family and siblings don’t know about.I struggle to give you a clear answer because no words have been invented that could capture the sum of the human experience over long millennia that aggregate to define what a faith is. No symbol, no singular concept exists to convey the entire weight of it all.It can only be held in your mind, like water in your palms.The Jewish and Parsi and Tibetan refugees fleeing to India. Prince Dipendra massacring the Nepalese royal family. LTTE rebels preparing to defend their villages. The burning of Gujrat. Indian doctors saving Pakistani children. Indian and Pakistani soldiers in blue helmets serving together to maintain the peace in war torn nations. The Samjhota bombings. The mathematical advances stemming from this land. The lynched Dalits. The colors of the Holi. The pain of fathers searching for abducted daughters in Sindh. The mystic ascetics who starve themselves for the truth. Your mother praying for you and stuffing your bag with charms before you traveled abroad. Post Colonial Hindu scholars writing works on how colonialism impacted the developing world, being studied far and wide. The feminist treatise of Hindu women. The environmentalist initiatives of Indian peasants, who understand more clearly our connection to the earth than Harvard scholars, and tie themselves to trees to prevent them from being cut down.And if you look deeper, you see the Hinduism of the land itself. Within the memory of each child or nostalgic old timer, you hold the fragmented experiences whose sum total defines Hinduism. How your fingers traced the groves in the stones of each temple. How your arms glistened with the rains of the Monsoon. Your eyes staring the dark grey clouds drowning the heat. The smell of soil struck by first rains.The Upanishads are the manifestation of all these experiences. Read them closely and you’ll feel these memories, speaking to you from across time, trapped inside them as well. I read them and I feel all these things, even when the words sometimes make no sense and the concepts are difficult to understand. Perhaps they were meant to be felt.Beyond that, I hold no pretense to understanding. Here, where the desert meets the river.So faithful Love unequald; but I feelFarr otherwise th' event, not Death, but LifeAugmented, op'nd Eyes, new Hopes, new Joyes,Taste so Divine, that what of sweet beforeHath toucht my sense, flat seems to this, and harsh.On my experience, Adam, freely taste,And fear of Death deliver to the Windes.Eve urging Adam to taste the forbidden fruit, Paradise LostThe Katas Raj temple in Pakistan. The growing desertification of Punjab, Climate Change and over development has resulted in its holy ponds drying away slowly. Perhaps best symbolizing the water - desert metaphor for the issues between Hinduism and Islam.Source: ENVIRONMENT: WATER WOES AT KATAS RAJEdit: Might just delete Pakistani and Indian comments getting into religous internet wars.

Not a cordial one. Each believed they were the better general. Each believed the army he commanded was the best. Each believed their contribution to the war was more significant. To say they were competitive would be an understatement.The two only fought side by side in Sicily. Their experience in Sicily provides an excellent description of their relationship.Eric Ethier writes “Inside Seventh Army headquarters on the southern coast of Sicily, a scowling Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., greeted Lieutenant General Omar Bradley with bad news. ‘We’ve received a directive from Army Group, Brad,’ Patton said between puffs on a cigar. ‘Monty’s to get the Vizzini-Caltagirone road in his drive to flank Catania and Mount Etna by going up through Enna. This means you’ll have to side-slip to the west with your 45th Division.’““‘My God,’ Bradley replied angrily, ‘you can’t allow him to do that!’““But Patton had nothing else to say on the subject. ‘Sorry Brad,’ he said evenly, ‘but the changeover takes place immediately. Monty wants the road right away.’““To Patton, Bradley, and just about every other senior United States Army officer, British General Sir Bernard Montgomery got his way entirely too often. This time, just four days into Operation HUSKY (the code name for the Allied Invasion of Sicily), Montgomery had convinced 15th Army Group Commander General Sir Harold Alexander to grant his Eighth Army exclusive use of a highway previously promised to the Americans. Patton and Bradley considered the decision an insult to American military prestige.““On July 10, 1943, Allied ships had deposited Patton’s Seventh U.S. Army on the beaches along the Gulf of Gela, on Sicily’s southwest coast. Montgomery’s British Eighth Army went ashore to the east, south of Syracuse. The Allies targeted the city of Messina, at the northeast tip of the triangular island. Capturing Sicily would eliminate persistent Axis attacks on nearby Mediterranean supply routes, and if Messina could be taken quickly, the invaders would snare thousands of Axis prisoners and gain a convenient jump-off spot for the upcoming invasion of Italy.““By July 13, Bradley’s II Corps had advanced inland to within 1,000 yards of the Vizzini-Caltagirone road (Route 124)–a major transport route that cut east to west across the center of the island. Meanwhile, dug-in German troops had blunted Montgomery’s advance up the island’s east coast, hemming Eighth Army in on the plain of Catania between towering Mount Etna and the sea. In a sudden change of plan, Montgomery decided to send a flanking force west around Etna. To do so he needed Route 124, and Alexander, who had overall command of HUSKY’s ground forces, gave it to him. The Americans, one of Patton’s frustrated staff officers said, were left to’sit comfortably on our prats while Montgomery finishes the goddam war!’““The British generals thought little of American fighting ability. In February, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps had thrust across the hot sands of North Africa and smashed through inexperienced and poorly led U.S. troops at Tunisia’s Kasserine Pass. The unfortunate performance of the young Americans–many of whom had never before seen battle–distressed the British commanders. Alexander declared, ‘they lack the will to fight.’ Montgomery believed ‘they have no confidence in their Generals.’““In the wake of the disaster at Kasserine Pass, the Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, sent Patton to Tunisia to take over U.S. II Corps. Patton quickly injected discipline and his fighting spirit into the corps and led it to victories at Gafsa and El Guettar. In mid-April as the Tunisian Campaign neared its end, Patton left the corps in Bradley’s hands and returned to French Morocco to take part in planning for the Sicily operation.““Despite the Americans’ improvement on the battlefield, Alexander and Montgomery remained unimpressed. For their part, Patton and many of his colleagues resented British impertinence, especially on the part of Montgomery. Arrogant, self-centered, and pushy, the 56-year-old general in the natty black beret irked his colleagues with outlandish statements and demands. In many ways he was not unlike Patton. At the age of 58, Patton was deeply religious, swashbuckling, ‘human dynamo’ who strutted around in a polished steel helmet with a pair of ivory-handled revolvers strapped to his waist. ‘His vigor was always infectious, his wit barbed, his conversation a mixture of obscenity and good humor,’ Bradley wrote. ‘He was at once stimulating and overbearing. George was a magnificent soldier.’ By the time he waded ashore on Sicily, Patton’s antipathy toward his British counterparts had also come to affect his relationship with his boss, Eisenhower. Patton’s long-time friend had the difficult job of holding together the young Anglo-American alliance. But Patton felt that American interests and honor too often took a back seat to British demands. ‘God damn all British and all so-called Americans who have their legs pulled by them,’ Patton wrote in his diary in Tunisia. ‘Ike is more British than the British and is putty in their hands . . . .’““For the first invasion of the Axis’ home turf, Patton commanded the new Seventh U.S. Army, including Bradley’s II Corps. Patton welcomed the chance to assert U.S. military might. Initially scheduled to land on the island’s northern coast and capture Sicily’s capital Palermo, American troops expected to go on the offensive in Sicily. But Montgomery favored a less dispersed landing to the south and in the end, his plan won out. Patton still expected Seventh Army to make its mark. But to Alexander, it was clear that ‘Eighth Army would have the glory of capturing the more obviously attractive objectives of Syracuse, Catania, and Messina . . . .’““From the outset Eighth Army strategy left little room for Patton to operate, and Montgomery essentially imposed his will on Alexander. Montgomery reasoned that if the Americans could simply ‘hold firm against any action from the west I could then swing hard with my right with an easier mind. If they draw enemy attacks on them my swing north will cut off enemy completely.’ Two days later, Alexander transferred use of Highway 124 to Montgomery. ‘They gave us the future plan of operations,’ Patton wrote bitterly, ‘which cuts us off from any possibility of taking Messina.’““Patton considered himself, with good reason, ‘the best damn ass-kicker in the U.S. Army,’ but he accepted this outrageous decision without a protest. This was not the time to raise a fuss. For the moment he saved his invective for his diary. ‘Ike has never been subjected to air attack or any other form of death. However, he is such a straw man that his future is secure. The British will never let him go.’““Yet Patton did not simply give up Highway 124 with a smile. He slyly secured authorization to expand the American perimeter west. Patton had his eyes set on Palermo, and, ultimately, Messina. The next day Patton and Major General Lucien K. Truscott, who headed up the 3rd Infantry Division, discussed a westward reconnaissance in force toward Agrigento and Porto Empedocle. Truscott felt that Alexander would not object to such a move, and Patton, Truscott wrote, ‘with something of the air of the cat that had swallowed the canary, agreed . . . .’ Patton had his foot in the door and he meant to swing it open.““On July 16 Alexander issued another directive that positively infuriated Patton. The order stipulated that Montgomery’s Eighth Army would advance on Messina on three fronts. The Americans were officially left with the distasteful task of protecting Montgomery’s left flank. Alexander lamely authorized Seventh Army ‘to capture Agrigento and Porto Empedocle’–something Truscott had done that very day. Patton blamed Montgomery. ‘Monty is trying to steal the show,’ he wrote to his wife, Beatrice, ‘and with the assistance of Divine Destiny [Eisenhower] may do so . . . .’““Patton had had enough. Alexander clearly had no intention of assigning Seventh Army anything other than mop-up duty in Western Sicily, while Montgomery’s Eighth marched to Messina and glory in the east. Patton felt his superior lacked ‘any conception of the power or mobility of the Seventh Army.’ On July 17 he climbed aboard a B-25 and flew to 15th Army headquarters in Tunisia to confront Alexander. Patton told the army group commander in no uncertain terms that he wanted his army unleashed. He explained ‘it would be inexpedient politically for the Seventh Army not to have equal glory in the final stage of the campaign.’ Patton asked for authorization to drive north to split the Axis forces and to clear out remaining resistance in the west. Alexander agreed, providing Seventh Army hold a crucial road network near Caltanissetta in the center of the island. ‘If I do what I am going to do,’ Patton confided to his diary, ‘there is no need of holding anything, but ‘it’s a mean man who won’t promise,’ so I did.’““Patton wasted no time putting his new plan into action. He created a Provisional Corps under the command of Major General Geoffrey Keyes, his deputy commander, and sent it northwest towards Palermo while Bradley’s II Corps set out for the north coast, knifing across the island’s center through tough German defenders. Facing light resistance from largely dispirited Italian troops, Keyes’ troops ‘moved so fast that often the German and Italian 88s [88mm anti-tank guns], which they captured en route, had not been pointed around or set up to shoot against them.’ On July 22 Truscott’s Division entered Palermo after covering an astonishing 100 miles in just 72 hours. Wild celebrations and ebullient Sicilians greeted the Americans. Support for Italy’s Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini was nowhere to be seen. The next day the 45th Division of Bradley’s II Corps reached the coast at Termini, 25 miles to the east. Until he took matters into his own hands, Patton wrote in his diary, ‘Monty was trying to command both armies and getting away with it.’ Now Seventh Army was making its mark.““Meanwhile, Patton pushed his personal competition with Montgomery to comical new heights. On July 25 he flew across the island to Syracuse for a meeting with Alexander and Montgomery. On seeing his erstwhile British rival, Patton noted, ‘I made the error of hurrying to meet him. He hurried a little too, but I started it.’ At the end of the conference, during which, Patton noted, he didn’t receive lunch, ‘Monty gave me a 5¢ cigar lighter. Some one must have sent him a box of them.’ When Montgomery visited Palermo a few days later, Patton sent an escort to meet him at the airport and greeted him at his headquarters with a full band. ‘I hope Monty realized that I did this to show him up for doing nothing for me on the 25th,’ Patton wrote. At Syracuse, Montgomery surprised Patton by suggesting that Seventh Army capture Messina. While Keyes and Bradley had raced across Sicily, Montgomery’s Eighth Army had become completely bogged down in the east. Dug-in German troops continued to hold Montgomery at Catania, while his circling movement west around Etna proceeded slowly. With Seventh Army now poised, cat-like, ready to strike east, Montgomery realized that Patton was best positioned to take the city. Besides, by attacking east Patton would relieve the pressure on Eighth Army and allow him to finally punch past Catania.”“Patton doubted Montgomery’s motives, but he needed no further urging. ‘This is a horse race in which the prestige of the US Army is at stake,’ he wrote to 45th Infantry Division Commander Major General Troy Middleton. ‘We must take Messina before the British. Please use your best efforts to facilitate the success of our race.’ Montgomery made little of this ‘race,’ but to Patton it became a personal crusade to win acclaim and respect for his much-maligned troops. British soldiers and officers undoubtedly wanted to beat the Americans into Messina. But Patton definitely hyped the contest.““On July 25, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III, supported by leading Italian political figures, deposed dictator Benito Mussolini, and Italy began to negotiate peace terms with the Allies. (Italy would pull out of the Axis in September.) As German commanders planned to evacuate Sicily, Patton and Montgomery began squeezing Axis defenders into the island’s northeast corner. Eighth Army continued to probe German defenses at Catania while Canadian and British troops drove in a ‘left hook’ around Etna’s western slope. To the north, the 1st and newly arrived 9th American Divisions advanced east from the island’s rugged center, while the 3rd Division attacked down the north coast road. ‘The mountains are the worst I have ever seen,’ Patton wrote on August 1. ‘It is a miracle that our men can get through them but we must keep up our steady pressure. The enemy simply can’t stand it, besides we must beat the Eighth Army to Messina.’““On August 3, Patton stopped by an army hospital outside Nicosia and chatted with several injured soldiers; ‘All were brave and cheerful,’ he noted. Then he encountered a 1st Division infantryman who seemed unhurt. Patton asked him what was wrong. ‘I guess I can’t take it,’ the soldier replied. Patton erupted. Cursing the soldier as a coward, he slapped him with his gloves and pushed him out of the tent. Such men, Patton wrote,’should be tried for cowardice and shot.’ A week later at another hospital Patton came across another ‘alleged nervous patient,’ a private in the 13th Field Artillery Brigade whose case was diagnosed as severe shell shock. Again Patton’s anger overcame him; again he slapped and cursed the soldier. ‘I can’t help it,’ he said, ‘but it makes my blood boil to think of a yellow bastard being babied.’ Patton didn’t realize the seriousness of what he had done, but the incidents would soon change his life and career.”“Patton’s relentless push for Messina also took its toll on his relationship with Bradley, a straight-laced subordinate who deplored Patton’s use of profanity and flamboyant style of command. ‘He traveled in an entourage of command cars followed by a string of nattily uniformed staff officers,’ Bradley wrote. ‘His own vehicle was gaily decked with oversize stars and the insignia of his command. These exhibitions did not awe the troops as perhaps Patton believed. Instead, they offended the men as they trudged through the clouds of dust left in the wake of that procession.’ Where Patton was eager to outshine Montgomery, Bradley failed to see the point in capturing Palermo. ‘Certainly there was no glory in the capture of hills, docile peasants, and spiritless soldiers,’ he wrote. To Bradley, racing Montgomery to Messina was equally unnecessary, for ‘However rapidly we pushed into that city, we could not cut the enemy’s escape route across to Italy.’““Yet Patton wanted more than a cheap victory over Montgomery. Despite galling BBC reports (soldiers called them Badly Biased Comments) ‘that the Seventh Army has been lucky to be in western Sicily eating grapes,’ the capture of Palermo had been a publicity coup for Patton’s army. The troops’ morale soared. The Americans’ non-stop marching and ability to operate tanks and other armored vehicles in rough terrain began to open the eyes of their Eighth Army counterparts. Capturing Messina promised more of the same.““As the final phase of the Sicily Campaign heated up, Patton drove his officers to push as hard as they could. Troina fell on August 6. To the south, British forces captured Adrano and–finally–Catania. Fighting a brilliant rearguard action, German army units crept back from their narrowing front toward the beaches of the Straits of Messina. There, German and Italian ships waited to ferry troops and equipment across the two-mile passage to the Italian mainland.““In an effort to by-pass enemy positions and speed up his advance, Patton authorized two amphibious landings along the north coast. On the night of August 7-8 Americans swept ashore virtually unopposed behind German lines at St. Agata. At the same time, troops from Truscott’s 3rd Division launched an attack on the high ridges inland and took 1,500 prisoners, bringing Seventh Army 12 miles closer to Messina. The second landing nearly proved a disaster. Truscott felt he would not have time to get his infantry up in time to support it, and wanted to postpone the attack for one day. Bradley agreed. But Patton was having none of it. Messina lay around the corner, and this wasn’t the time to slow down. Early on August 11 elements of Truscott’s 30th Infantry regiment went ashore at Brolo, 12 miles behind a German front. The Americans were quickly pinned down on a hill just above town. Nearly 30 hours passed before the balance of Truscott’s troops could relieve them. Progress had again been made, but at a high price.““On August 13 American troops captured Randazzo. To the south, British and Canadian troops forced the Germans from the slopes of Mt. Etna. Axis forces flooded toward Messina. On the night of August 15-16 Montgomery tried an amphibious landing of his own, putting elements of his commando and armored units ashore at Scaletta, just eight miles from Messina.”“Patton ordered a third ‘leap-frog’ operation for that same night, but by then American troops were moving so fast that they had already passed the scheduled landing site by the time the ship borne force arrived. Around 10:00 p.m. on August 16 elements of Truscott’s 3rd Division entered bomb-scarred Messina. Patton immediately notified Eisenhower and Alexander, and called Bradley to tell him ‘we would enter Messina in the morning at 1000 hours.’““Early the next morning as the last of the Axis troops slipped off the island, Patton met Truscott, Keyes, and a host of reporters on a hill outside town. ‘What in hell are you all standing around for?’ he bellowed. Bradley remained conspicuously absent. ‘This is a great disappointment to me,’ Patton later wrote, ‘as I had telephoned him, and he certainly deserved the pleasure of entering the town.’ But Bradley wanted no part of Patton’s pomp and ceremony. Minutes later, a procession of army vehicles led by Patton’s command car roared into Messina, chased all the way by exploding shells fired by Axis guns on the Italian mainland.““After fighting their way over mined roads and around blown-up bridges in the early-morning hours, Lieutenant Colonel J.M.T.F. Churchill’s British commandos reached the city only to find the Americans already there. At about 10:30 a.m., Patton pulled into the city square just as a squadron of Brigadier J.C. Currie’s British 4th Armored tanks rumbled into town. Both Churchill and Currie had brought along a set of bagpipes to celebrate beating the Americans into town. ‘I think the general was quite sore that we had got there first . . . .’ Patton wrote. Currie climbed out of his Sherman tank to shake hands with a glowing Patton. ‘It was a jolly good race,’ Currie said with a smile. ‘I congratulate you.’”“Patton’s victorious, hell-for-leather drive on Messina restored some luster to an otherwise badly managed campaign. Rather than firmly coordinating the moves of Seventh and Eighth Armies, Alexander had vacillated, first backing down to Montgomery and then allowing, almost forcing, Patton to set his own course. Poor decisions, such as the reassignment of Highway 124 to Montgomery (and poor air cover over the Messina Straits), ultimately cost time, and allowed Axis ships and ferries to evacuate roughly 60,000 Italian soldiers, 40,000 Germans, 10,000 vehicles, and 17,000 tons of equipment from the island–all of which would soon be used against the Allies in Italy.““The race had significant, if less tangible, repercussions for Patton and American fighting men. The fast-moving Seventh Army had proved itself the equal of Eighth Army and set a new standard in mobile warfare. The Americans, Montgomery admitted after the war, had ‘proved themselves to be first-class troops. It took time; but they did it more quickly than we did.’”“Patton was entirely satisfied with his own performance. ‘Of course, had I not been interfered with on the 13th of July by a full change of plan,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘I would have taken Messina in ten days, but then I would have had to turn back to get Palermo, so it all came out O.K.’ Although Alexander would continue to rate British troops above the Americans, Patton had effectively exorcised the demons of Kasserine Pass.““Yet the Sicilian campaign almost ended Patton’s 34-year army career. Reports of the two slapping incidents made their way to Eisenhower and, even worse, a small group of reporters. Eisenhower was furious. He ordered Patton to apologize to the soldiers involved and warned him that such behavior ‘will not be tolerated in this theater no matter who the offender may be.’ Meanwhile he asked the reporters to refrain from publishing the story for the good of the Allied cause. Patton was his best general and would be needed again. They agreed.““The story finally broke in November but Eisenhower refused to relieve his old friend. Still, the public furor over the slapping incidents doomed Patton to many months of glum idleness while the war passed him by. Eisenhower dropped him from consideration for command of American ground forces in the inevitable invasion of Europe–an honor that eventually went to Bradley. When Patton finally returned to action in France in command of Third Army in August 1944, he was subordinate to both Bradley and Montgomery. Yet to Patton, that was secondary. Destiny had beckoned him and he would soon become, as one German officer said, ‘the most feared general on all fronts.’“General George S. Patton's Race to Capture Messina

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