31. This Is No Game
Heads up: This is a happy cry story. When I was 14 years old or so, I went with my dad to Target one time. He was doing some general Christmas shopping, but also had a list from an impoverished inner-city family. It was hand-written with notes from each of the four children in the family. They were instructed by the charity running the program to keep their requests reasonable, but my dad read every single one and went way overboard.
One kid asked for a video game for a previous gen system. My dad instead bought him a PS2 (which was new at the time) and a bunch of games. One of the daughters asked for a modest desk to do her schoolwork on. He bought her a really cool one and threw in every kind of school supplies she could ever possibly need. It was no different for the other two kids.
He ended up spending a lot of money on this family that he didn’t even know. When he saw how jealous I was of the PS2 (since I had really been wanting one badly for a while), he looked at me and said, “I want you to stop and really think about who this is going to and what their life is probably like and what it will feel like for them to open this on Christmas. If you do that and still want it, then I’ll give it to you instead.” And so that’s the story of how I got my rad new PS2. Just kidding! It’s how I learned about the joy of giving, and that my dad was secretly a pretty cool guy!