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Add a comment May 4, 2011

wonderful Story

Hi everyone! Just want to share with you a wonderful story… 🙂

The Dime
By Patricia S. Laye

One day I visited a businessman’s office, and while we
talked, I noticed that he constantly twirled a small
paperweight with a dime in it. Curious, I asked him about
it.

He said,”When I was in college, my roommate and I
were down to our last dime. He was on a scholarship, while
I had earned my tuition by working in the cotton field and
a grocery store. We were the first two members of our
families to ever attend college, and our parents were
extremely proud of us. Each month they sent us a small
allowance to buy food, but that month our checks hadn’t
arrived. It was a Sunday, the fifth of the month, and
between us we had one dime left.

“We used the solitary dime to place a collect call to
my home five hundred miles away. My mother answered. I
could tell from her voice that something was wrong. She
said that my father had been ill and out of work, so there
was simply no way they could send any money that month. I
asked if my roommate’s check was in the mail. She said
that she had talked with his mother. They also couldn’t
raise the extra money that month either. They were sorry,
but it looked like we’d have to come home. They had put
off telling us, hoping for some solution.”

“Were you disappointed?” I asked.

“Devastated. We both were. We had one month
remaining to finish the year, then we could work all summer
to earn our expenses. My grades were excellent, so I had
been guaranteed a scholarship for the next term.”

“What did you do?”

“When I hung up the telephone, we heard a noise and
dimes started pouring out of the pay phone. We were
laughing and holding out our hands to catch the money.
Students walking down the hall thought we were crazy. We
discussed taking the money and using it. Nobody would know
what happened. But then we realized we couldn’t do that.
It wouldn’t be honest. You understand?”

“Yes, but it would have been tough to return it.”
“Well, we tried. I called the operator back and told
her what had happened.” He smiled, remembering. “She said
that the money belonged to the telephone company, so to
replace it in the machine. We did, over and over again,
but the machine wouldn’t accept the dimes.

“I finally told the operator that the dimes kept
falling back out. She said that she didn’t know what else
to do, but she’d talk to her supervisor. When she returned
>she said that we’d have to keep the money, because the
company wasn’t going to send a man all the way out to the
school just to collect a few dollars.”

He looked over at me and chuckled, but there was
emotion in his voice. “We laughed all the way back to our
dorm room. After counting the money, we had $7.20. We
decided to use the money to buy food from a nearby grocery
store and we went job hunting after class.”

“Did you find a job?”
“Yes, we told the manager of the grocery store what
had happened as we paid for our purchases with our dimes.
He offered us both jobs beginning next day. Our money
bought enough supplies to last until our first paycheck.”

“You were both able to finish college?”
“Yes, we worked for that man until we graduated. My
friend went on to eventually become a lawyer.” He looked
around him and said,”I graduated in business, then went on
to start this company which today is a multi-million-dollar
corporation. My own children have attended college, as
have my roommate’s, but we were the first.”

“Is that one of your original dimes?”
He shook his head. “No, we had to use those, but when
I got my first paycheck I saved a dime, which I carried all
the way through college. I’ve kept it to remind me where I
came from. When I count my blessings, I remember that once
in my life, a single thin dime stood between me and the
poverty my parents faced every day of their lives.”

“Did you ever meet the telephone operator or tell her
how much that money meant to you?”

“No, but when we graduated, my roommate and I wrote a
letter to the local telephone company and asked if they
wanted their money back.

“The president of the company wrote us a letter of
congratulations and told us that he’d never felt the
company’s money was better spent.”

“Do you think this was a fluke or meant to be?”
“I’ve thought about it often over the years. I
wondered if the operator might have heard the fear in my
voice; perhaps she prevented the machine from accepting the
coins. Or maybe . . . it was an act of God.”

“You’ll never know for sure, will you?”
He shook his head, touching the paperweight as if he
drew strength from it. “No, but I’ll always remember that
moment and that dime. I have repaid that debt many times
over the years. I hope that I have helped someone else as
much as a dime helped me.”

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND TO ALL!

God Bless!

Add a comment May 1, 2010