Golda Markowitz- English 110: In Class Writing #1

It’s not often that a story one reads makes an impact on him. However this past weekend, I personally read a story in the Reader’s Digest that touched me very deeply. It made me think about life and its challenges, and about courage.
The story from Readers Digest that I read is about a young boy who loved to run and wanted to be an athlete and an Olympic runner. His mother, who wanted to help him pursue his dream, found him a coach who worked with the boy for a few years on improving his running skills. After a few years, when the boy reached the age of high school- he had become a young muscular athlete, yet he still hadn’t become the sort of man internally that his coach wanted him to become.
There was a day that the boy pointed out how worthless he felt it was to read a certain book in one of his classes at school. His coach took this opportunity and started reading with the boy about courage, loyalty, and other values that make a man really a man. The boy began to learn more and more from this and eventually had both the qualities of a young athlete and of a man with the correct values and a good heart.
At this time, his coach had become extremely sick, and day by day he was getting worse physically. It came to the point where he gave up walking or doing anything. He felt worthless. The boy now knew more than ever, after all that he had personally gone through, that his coach cannot give up and that he could still be a productive man even at this hard state. He told his coach that he will be at his side all the way just like the coach was at the boy’s side through thick and thin. The courage and loyalty that the boy had learned and gave over to his coach went so far as to help the coach attend the boy’s big running competition where the boy won.
I specifically remembered this story because of the way it touched me after I read it. The relationship of this coach to his student seemed to me as close as a relationship of a father to his son. When a father sees a talent or a special unique trait in his child, he’ll go out of his way to enable that child to pursue that talent and do something with it. And that’s exactly what the coach did for his student. But what touched me even more was the way the coach saw into the boy’s heart and transformed him not only into an athlete, but into a man who grew in his values and way of looking at life. He taught his student how to face his fears and conquer anything that challenged him from growing further.
What made the story even more touching was the fact that the boy, being transformed into a new person, enabled him to use his new and important values to help his coach persevere through the hardships he was going through when he got sick. Because the boy now knew what courage and determination meant, he used his knowledge to give his coach courage to hold on and get through his obstacles.
This is a story of growth, compassion, determination, and courage. It’s about fighting anything that may come to block your way. This story made me think of those I care about and those who care about me and it emphasized to me how having values such as these can help someone reach beyond where they thought they can reach.
This article on the story can be found at:
http://www.rd.com/stories/inspiration/true-story-of-a-coach-who-made-a-difference/article.html
After rereading the article on this story, I realized that I remembered the basic plot and the important message that the writer was trying to give off. I did not however remember the exact names of the coach or the student, or any details about their families. It seems that a story stands out in one’s mind because of its message and what it is trying to tell the reader. That is what I remembered and what stood out in my mind.