Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

We had a bus break down on our way to a track meet yesterday.  We were stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the side of the Interstate with cars and trucks flying by at 75 mph.  Three coaches, a bus driver, and 26 high school athletes.  As you can imagine, time went pretty slowly there, with nothing much to do but wait for the replacement bus to come and get us.  Most of the students waited outside the bus, on the far side of the guard rail, throwing rocks down the hill next to us and checking out all the garbage that people had thrown from their cars.

A couple of them found an old piece of cardboard.  Once they had that, it was a matter of moments before they came up with a marker and started writing on it.  Within a couple of minutes, they were standing next to the guard rail with the cardboard raised high towards the cars.  Some of the drivers started honking their horns, but most of them were going far too fast even to read the relatively small letters.

In my position, I simply had to find out what was written on their sign.  If there was something offensive or vulgar on the sign and none of us coaches did anything about it, we could have had some very negative fallout–especially with the name of the school written on the bus.  So I kept my eyes on the sign, waiting for the guy who was holding it to turn around for a moment.

It wasn’t long before he did, and when I was able to read the sign I felt a surge of hope, a flow of optimism about life in general and our students in particular.  For written on the sign for all to see were the words “Honk if you love life.”

There are so many things that a small group of 15-17-year-olds could have come up with.  There are so many ways that they could have tried to push buttons and infuriate people.  But there on the side of the highway while waiting for relief from a bus that had broken down, they came up with a beautiful message to share with everyone who happened to drive by.

I think that tomorrow on my way to work I’m going to wait until I’m in an uncrowded spot where no one can misinterpret a stray noise, and honk my horn for the memory of that sign, and in honor of the kids who shared a bit of hope with us in a most unexpected way.  Perhaps you, too–somewhere, some time–could honk if you love life.