by Tony Keyes
Japan
When a child begins elementary school in Japan, it’s customary for him or her to receive a “Ransel” — a standard-sized backpack that will be a status symbol for their six years of elementary school. Having just bought one for my son, I can understand its value by the breadth of the smile on his face when he tried it on for the first time.
Usually, this is a present from grandparents or parents, and receiving it is considered one of the first rites of passage of a child’s life. Those children unfortunate enough to live in an orphanage or a foster center have no one to buy them a Ransel, so they can only hope for a donation or a hand-me-down.
That changed on Christmas morning of December 2010 when an anonymous donor left half a dozen Ransel backpacks at a foster home in Maebashi, Japan. The donor used a pseudonym from a character in a manga (comic) series, Naoto Date. Supposedly this is the real name of a professional wrestler whose stage name is Tiger Mask — a well-known hero among children for the last four decades.
Now that of itself is a wonderful, heartwarming story, but the great thing about it is that it was only the beginning.
In the days and weeks that followed, a series of copycat incidents occurred. Soon after the first gift, the mysterious Naoto Date and his imitators appeared at six locations, donating various numbers of backpacks. In one case, the benefactor left toys and apologized for being unable to provide backpacks!
By the middle of January, as others borrowed the Naoto Date alias and its spirit of charity, the number of Ransels donated rose to almost three hundred nationwide.
Other anonymous donors have given gifts of a more substantial nature, but in this case, I think the gift is more valuable because it was small enough to inspire imitation. How far that wave of goodwill will continue to spread across this country remains to be seen. Still, in the days following this gift, I watched the evening news with a sense of anticipation: anticipation of something good, for a change.
In spring of 2011, I will watch my own son take those momentous first steps into his elementary school classroom. Some of the tears welling up in my eyes will probably be for the other children who join him on that great adventure, bursting with pride that they too have a brand new backpack that they did not expect to have, glad they do not stand out from the crowd with an old, ragged hand-me-down.
As I congratulate my son’s grandparents on another wonderful milestone in their autumn years, I will probably think of the anonymous “volunteer” grandparents watching from afar as a child they don’t even know walks with a beaming smile into a classroom, ready to take on the world.
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It would be interesting to see if there’s a follow up on this story in the last 5 years, to know how far the ripple of giving has spread.
I always encourage story authors to return and post their updates. Unfortunately I no longer have contact information for most of the authors of the stories in our archives, but hopefully they’ll see this.
One GREAT story at THIS time —
In the famous prayer attributed to Saint Frances of Assisi, the lines at the end of the prayer say:
“For it is in giving that we receive,
and in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
You don’t even have to know this prayer, to understand a great truth and it isn’t always the big gifts that count. The little ones often have more meaning for the recipient and are never forgotten.
“A very dear friend of mine told me this anecdote: Her first child was born weighing only six pounds. My friend’s mother, and the baby girl’s grandmother, penned this sweet message for her grand daughter on pink stationery. This is what she wrote:“Dearest Paige, sometimes the most precious, meaningful gifts come in small packages, just like you, my tiny granddaughter.”