LOOKING UP AT HARRY | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: LOOKING UP AT HARRY | Previous Challenge Entry
By linzy bruno
04/15/15
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Madeline followed her brother up the stairs; happily imitating his exaggerated motions.
During breakfast, she hung onto his knee, while he enjoyed his usual breakfast burrito; using the bed of his favorite toy truck as a plate. "Up Harry!" she begged.
"No Madeline, Harry is eating right now," she heard her mother say; hollering over a towering sink full of dishes.
"AHHHH," she screamed, as she tried to climb onto Harry's legs. Harry continued quietly eating; stopping only once to stroke his sister's fine silky hair.
"You have to let Harry finish eating Madeline!" her mother repeated.
"It's cool Mom," he said a few minutes later. Then he scooped Madeline up to his chest and carried her upstairs for their usual morning story time.
The next day on the school playground, Harry sat on a bench; "the grown-ups bench."
"Harry.... Harry quite contrary, how does YOUR garden grow?" all the other boys laughed; especially a boy named Kevin.
Harry didn't reply. He got up and walked away from the bench and sat down on one of the swings; his eyes fixated on the ground.
Year passed......
"Our Madeline isn't a tiny baby anymore," Harry told his sister the morning she was about to enter the fourth grade. He stared at her pig tails that stuck straight out and her huge cork-like glasses and smiled. He walked her to her bus stop, as he always did, but there was a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that particular school morning, especially when she requested he walk far behind her.
"Hahahaha," laughed several kids already waiting at the stop. "Here comes the nerd," they all started chanting.
"Shhhhh!" one of them warned, "her VERY big brother's coming!"
"Hey stop that," said Harry, as he approached the stop. "You kids need to learn to do unto others. Who knows what that means?"
The others looked away.
"That means that laughing at others is wrong. How would you feel if everyone was laughing at you?
The kids kicked at the ground.
"It doesn't feel so good, now does it? Let this be a lesson to you, if you want to be treated well, you should treat others well. Nobody is more important than anybody else. We ALL matter to God."
Things went on that way for years, with Madeline needing her big brother's help and attention and always getting every bit of it.
Then Harry grew up. He became a truck driver, like he'd always dreamed.
One day he saw one of those kids from the school playground. He recognized him from some pictures he'd seen on Facebook. His car had gone off the road and he was standing outside shivering in the snow; trying to call for help on his out-dated cell phone, but it was dead.
Harry pulled his eighteen wheeler off the road and walked over to where the man was standing.
"Hey!" he yelled to get his attention, as he reached for his toolbox.
The man looked up, obviously surprised to see his old classmate.
"Hey Kevin; I can help you push your car out if you'd like and then I'll check under your hood."
Kevin nodded; his mouth hanging open. The two men managed to push Kevin's car back on the side of the road and Harry fixed everything in the engine.
"There ya go Dude," he said with a smile.
"Ahhhhh...., you mind if I ask what in hell you are doing?" Kevin asked, with a smirk.
"You needed help," Harry replied, with a shrug and a smile.
Years later, Harry was shot and killed. The church overflowed with mourners.
Madeline got up and spoke: "Harry was THE BEST big brother. I guess that's why when I was a baby I was always begging him to pick me up. I always looked up at and up to Harry. He taught me to stand up for what's right; like Jesus taught His disciples. He was killed because some guys hated him. They called him bad names, but he was the strongest person......They assumed because he was kind and gentle; he was some sorta freak, but the truth is, if Harry were here right now, he'd say: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do...."(Luke 23.35 KJB), just as Jesus did, as He slowly died on the cross. That was my brother Harry."
Madeline's gut-wrenching words moved everyone to tears.

Fiction

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