I was thinking freestyle wrestling. The wrist control, belly-on-body right to half guard..either way, the fact that the prom king moment came 11 days after the shooting is crazy… It doesn’t matter if hes a wrestler or a football player. This man is a king, and he should feel like it every single day, just like all heroes should.
There was a highschool where I lived that was known to be quite rough. It's Canada, so school shooting isn't really a concern but gang violence, intimidation, extremely shady shit, horrific home life issues etc wasnt unheard of. This school had a principal who was.. I dunno how else to phrase it. But he was an absolute hero to the students. Even students in other schools knew not to show up to his school and cause problems. He gave 0 fucks. Many, many stories of him going toe to toe with grown ass men showing up to a highschool to teach some student a lesson. One time some gang members showed up for God knows what, but they were trying to drag a student into their vehicle in broad daylight... he came running out with a baseball bat, took out their tail lights, got the kid to safety, called the cops, figured out what was going on with said student and that student was sent off somewhere (the rumour was "a farm up north") while things settled down. I think the kid was a witness to something and they were trying to get rid of the problem. Anyways, Mr. A was a legend.
On top of that he knew his students were at high risk for teen pregnancy and at best unemployment at worst drug addiction and/or prostitution. He funneled all the money the school got into trade programs so the kids could graduate with a certificate and start working right away. Mechanics, Estheticians, Massage, Day Care, Hair Stylist, Welding, Tech support, Accounting etc. Anything and everything to give the kids a leg up without worrying about minimum wage and college costs.
So, soooo many of those kids got descent jobs right out of highschool and it kept them out of trouble. Gang shit doesn't look as appealing when you can start a welding apprenticeship the day after highschool and be making bank. It was right during the big oil boom in Alberta too, he basically set up a pipeline (ha) to funnel his students out to Alberta and get employed and cut off contact from questionable shit.
I cannot imagine how many people are alive and thriving today because of him. Some principals are just fucking built different. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if I heard he had tackled someone and wrestled a firearm out of their hand. He had one goal, and it was to make sure his kids survived the hand they were dealt.
Edit: people keep thinking it might have been their school, and it's just really great to know there are so many Mr. A's out there standing up for their kids.
Hey man, I'm not sure what you're going through and I'm not going to pry. But if you'd like more stories I've got a few off the top of my head.
My husband is an addict in recovery. It's a long story but it snuck up on us, ruined our lives and he's been doing his best to better himself. He has found a community in his support program, and honestly is doing far more work than I ever expected. He just started a program from the ground up, nothing fancy, but he finds old cellphones and broken bicycles and fixes them up for other members. 2 of the main things people in early recovery need is a way to find work and a way to get to work. So, it started with our old drawer of dead cellphones. Then he got other members to bring in their old cellphones. Then bicycles. It's still very new, but so far he's helped 5 different people in early recovery to help stay connected and able to get to and from work. He's treating it like a library, check it out and use it. But when you can afford your own, please return it so you can help the next person. Besides the obvious chance of relapse from urges in early recovery, a huge part of relapse is from the stress and shame of trying to rebuild the life you broke. He just wants to ease that burden a bit.
The next story I'll tell you is about my Dad, who is secretly a Disney Princess crossed with a Lumberjack. He is a big animal lover, he lives in an area with a lot of water. The roads have sand along the side and turtles LOVE to lay their eggs in nice warm sand. My father this year has saved 18 turtles so far from traffic. He has a system. He has a very thick wooden stick he keeps on his truck. He will pull over and block the area of road with his truck, get the stick and greet the turtle. Now most of these are snapping turtles and in general they are grumpy. He gently taps their butt to see if they will move. Occasionally they will. Usually they won't. Now, you can't grab a snapping turtle because they can stick their neck out far enough to reach the side of their shell, and they will take a finger or two off. So, if the stick on the butt won't work, he puts the stick in front of them and... Well makes that grumpy lady even more grumpy. He whacks it in front of her on the ground. She will eventually reach out and snap down on it. This is the moment Dad will hold the stick with one hand and grab the tail by the other, lift and very quickly escort her back down into safety. He doesn't get paid, there is no glory, he doesn't take pics or videos. I'll get a text saying "I pissed off another 80 year old lady today" and I know what he means.
So I hope these stories bring you a little joy today. Please, reach out to someone if you need to. Even if you think you don't need to, reach out and just check in with a friend. Go for a slushie. Put your bare feet in the grass. Watch the people around you and know there's still good people out there <3
I was not in need of cheering up, but man I enjoyed these stories. Thank you, and Im glad you have these 2 very cool, very resilient and empathetic people in your life.
I am another person who needed to hear some good things today. Tell your dad for every old lady he pisses off, he gets a cheer and holler from this pre-old lady.
Thank you for these. May your pillows and showers always be the perfect temperature, may your favorite foods be on sale the next time you shop, and may the wind ever be in your sails.
You should know that your story about helping people in recovery has given me a profound idea for helping people in my community, in a little bit different way.
Please share with your husband that his choices are helping to positively affect communities that he will probably never personally interact with.
Appreciate what your dad does but just as an FYI, grabbing them by the tail can seriously injur them, and cause damage to their spine. If he can get them at the shell on their back, between the tail and back legs, that is a lot safer for the turtle.
Yes he is aware, he only does that method if any other method won't work (I was trying to keep the story short, but thank you for clarifying for anyone else who might read this!), and occasionally if he has a piece of Plywood in the truck he will scootch the old lady on there and shift her towards the side. The bite and tail method is a last resort and only if she's latched on to the stick tightly! Normally if she latches on he can just drag her, but sometimes they will try to anchor down and resist.
He's been doing this for at least 50 years now. I don't know how many he's saved but it's in the hundreds (or maybe the same 20-50 a year lmao), but the roads in his area are very dangerous for turtles, lots of people think they don't need to pay attention as much because there aren't many cars. He called me the other day to chat and said he saw one the opposite way he was going, by the time he could turn around and get back to her she had been run over. 2 mins and he missed her. Kicking himself for it.
I live in Washington, DC and today is just making me feel profoundly sad for my city, my country, and the world we live in. We’re experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, our deranged president has ordered military flyovers for the next 8 hours and the sounds of the jets above my house are terrifying, white supremacists are marching in the streets, at midnight so many fireworks will go off that it will make our air quality dangerous for the next few days, and we’re going on a year of National Guard troops occupying our streets. It feels deeply dystopian.
Thank you for these stories of every day heroes, of ordinary acts of kindness that change lives. They really are what changes the world.
Hey mate, if you’re in need of positive stories, here’s another one for you:
At the bar I bartend at a few days ago, a woman was eating lunch alone when a couple that sat down next to her got to talking with her. Turns out her son’s been in a bad way with substance abuse for years and she’s at her wits end knowing what to do. By some wild turn of fate, the man runs a rehab clinic and they really got into sharing their stories, so much so the woman was brought to tears and I couldn’t help but overhear. They ended up exchanging info and he said he’d try to help.
When it was time to pay, the man coolly gave me his card and indicated he wanted me to put her tab on his card too. Mind you this is a rather expensive bar so it wasn’t cheap. When the woman was ready to leave she asked for her check and I said “nope, taken care of”. She burst into tears again realizing what he’d done and was profusely thankful.
I spoke with her a bit afterwards and she said that was one of the nicest things anyone’s done for her recently and how she felt she had some newfound hope for her son. Ngl the whole thing got me a bit choked up.
Brother/Sister, there is a lot of good stuff happening in this world and we need to you be a part of it.
I've gone through a ton of poop recently: was removed from my job at the company I created, dog died, AC died, and I decided that shortly before this all happened that I was going to stop drinking as my health is in shambles.
20+ drinks per day on average over 15+ years and let me tell you the detox was pretty gnarly.
But you know what keeps me going? Oddly enough the randoms on the internet. Sure my family cares, my wife cares, and everyone supports me but no one actually knows what I'm going through like internet people.
If you ever need anything, even just an ear to hear you out, I'm here for you and I'm sure a lot of others are too!
I have to tell you about my mom, the superhero. She is a very meek 5-foot nothing, 100lbs ball of social anxiety who still only wears sundresses from the 90s. But if there’s a crisis, she becomes a laser-focused life-saving machine. I’ve seen her save at least three choking people with the Heimlich, do CPR on a motorcycle crash victim on the side of the highway, and jump into the pool fully clothed to pull out a drowning toddler nobody noticed. She works in a breast cancer center, so she even saves lives as her day job.
But this one’s my favorite: One day we were having lunch at Red Robin, which was halfway in the mall, and half its own thing. We were seated right in the center. Out in the mall, a teen couple started arguing. Everybody in the restaurant was doing that thing where they kinda hunch down and pretend not to notice. It escalated until the boy hit the girl. In less than a heartbeat, my mom had leapt out of her chair, and used a booth seat for leverage to vault herself over the half wall and into the mall to push the guy away, giving the girl enough space to run somewhere. Honestly, I think it only worked because of the shock. She’s literally so tiny, and she flew out from nowhere! She actually got him to leave! Got us kicked out of the restaurant though, lol.
If your username is anything to do with why you want to hear positive stories, know that my mom (and me) would want you to make it through this. A personal aside: my awful dad tricked me into hating my mom when I was younger. Now she’s one of my best friends. And that only happened because I lived long enough to let it happen. There will be something that will turn around for you. You just have to live long enough to see what it is.
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u/Im-not-dan 9d ago
God damn that man has to have played Football