My daughter sent this to me via e-mail so rather than just forward it (I will do this too), I decided to share it here as well as this is such an inspiring story.  I was planning on something else, but this is way too cool to pass up sharing with you today.  This is VERY close to my heart as my brother was a person just like Shay.

Two Choices

What would you do?….you make the choice. Don’t look for a punch line,
there isn’t one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the
same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled
children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would
never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and
its dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by
outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet
my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot
understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of
things in my son?’

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. ‘I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically
and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize
true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people
treat that child.’

Then he told the following story:

Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were
playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ Shay’s
father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on
their team, but the father also understood th at if his son were allowed
to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some
confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

Shay’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not
expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance
and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning.
I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the
ninth innin g.’

Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a
team shirt. His father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in
his heart. The boys saw the father’s joy at his son being accepted. In
the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was
still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a
glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he
was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning
from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom
of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the
bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was
scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win
the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit
was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat
properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that
the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life,
moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least
make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.
The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly
towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow
ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and
could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have
been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the firs t baseman’s head,
out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams
started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life
had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered
down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath,
Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to
the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder
had the ball … the smallest guy on their team who now had his first
chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the
second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so
he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the
third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the
runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay!’

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by
turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third!
Shay, run to third!’

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were
on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home,
stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam
and won the game for his team.

‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,
‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity
into this world’.

Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never
forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home
and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY: We all send thousands of jokes
through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending
messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and
often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about
decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re
probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the
‘appropriate’ ones to receive this type of message. Well, the person who
sent you this believes that we all can make a difference. We all have
thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the ‘natural
order of things.’ So many seemingly trivial interactions between two
people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love
and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a
little bit colder in the process?

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats the least
fortunate amongst them.

You now have two choices:
1. Delete
2. Forward

May your day be a Shay Day!

<!— AUTHCODE QGUJTNKNQMRK —>

I really wish I would have started writing articles
and posting my content online way back when I first
started marketing.

You know I love paid marketing strategies like EZINE
ADVERTISING and Pay-Per-Click Advertising, but the
problem with all those strategies is that if you
STOP paying for the ads… your traffic STOPS. Yes,
that has happened to me recently. I had to go to another plan
in which giving up was NOT even an option! After all, I
have things to prove to myself and to the nay-sayers.

But… how would you like to put out an “advertisement”
ONCE and get traffic from that ONE “advertisement” for
years to come?

THAT is the incredible power and leverage of CONTENT
MARKETING or “article marketing”. By the way, I’m just
starting to do video article marketing! I’ll let you know how that goes.

You see when you create an article, a blog post,
a squidoo lens, or any other piece of content online,
including videos and forum posts…

… that little piece of content STAYS online FOREVER!

THIS IS EXTREMELY POWERFUL!

This content can potentially bring you traffic on an
ongoing basis for years and years to come.

Its like having your own piece of real estate on the
internet. And there’s no limit to how much real estate
you can create.

Think about this…

If you create 10 articles and submit these articles to just
the 6 article directories we recommend in our TRAINING CENTER…
you would have 60 little pieces of content out on the internet.

Each one of them with a link back to your main website.

Its like 60 little fishing hooks out in the water ready
to catch a bite!

Now lets say each of these articles, on average brings
you just 5 visitors per month. That would be 30 visitors
to your website each and every month.

Doesn’t sound like very much does it?

But wait.. because this is sort of like building residual
income, but with traffic.

Now imagine this…

You actually get serious… and you decide that you will
create just 1 article each day.

1 article each day…at the end of 90 days, you would
have 90 articles. Incredible what a little CONSISTENCY
can do, no?

So you have 90 articles and you submit them to those
6 article directories.

You now have 540 little fishing hooks out on the internet
each one with your website link.

Now assuming we get a measly 5 visits from each article,
each month (and this is a very low number) this simple
strategy of creating content would bring you….

2700 VISITORS to your website EACH and EVERY
MONTH!!

If you’re website converts around 20% from visits to leads,
which ours do, that would create roughly 540 FREE LEADS
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All absolutely FREE!!

Not sure if I can make it any clearer for you

Imagine if you kept this up for a whole year?!

Now get to work:

http://www.LetMaxxxHelp.com/training/marketing/08