Ten Foot Tall Teenager

Joey loves massages. As a Christmas gift, I bought him a half-hour massage with a massage therapy instructor. We arrived a little early at her place of business, a physical therapy office, and took a seat in the waiting room. Soon after, a physical therapy patient rolled out of the office into the waiting room in her wheelchair. As she waited for her ride, she went to the vending machines for a snack. Her purse, slung across the back of her chair, was impossibly out of her reach. As she struggled to turn and reach for it, Joey quietly got up and walked over to her. "Can I help you?" he gently said. "Oh yes," she replied with relief. I watched with a joyful heart as he carefully extracted her purse from the headrest of her chair. Unable to reach the money slot (it was too high for her to reach comfortably from her chair), she gave the money to Joey. He slowly threaded it in and punched the numbers for her snacks. When she offered to buy him something, he said simply, "No thank you, I just wanted to help you." As he walked back towards me, he was ten feet tall in my eyes.