Sid Roberts: Cheer people from the sidelines of their lives

By Sid Roberts / Herald Forum

I was raised in a small town in Kansas where fun and wholesome activities for kids were in short supply. Our options for TV and radio were slim. There were no rivers, mountains or natural lakes. The only tangible natural resources there were sagebrush, nice people, and lots of wind.

There were plenty of mischievous activities to keep a kid busy, but entertainment of the wholesome type was mostly nonexistent.

Team school sports did offer youngsters an outlet for fun, and I played every sport available to me. To be on the school sports “traveling team” meant that for games away from home, students were able to leave school early and travel to a nearby town to play.

Besides the game itself, one side benefit of traveling to other towns to play was eating out at a restaurant after the game. There was also the ride back home with your teammates and then finally arriving at home near bedtime. Now that was a fun day.

However, in seventh grade, I didn’t make our basketball traveling team. This was some devastating news to me! Even though the day was sunny, I remember walking slowly home from school with my head down and feeling a darkened countenance.

As I walked in measured steps away from school toward home, I stopped at a church that was along the way and sat on the front steps. Life seemed so unfair to my 12-year-old mind. Now visually out of sight from school and friends, I sat on those church steps and wept like a baby.

Miraculously, in a few minutes, my mother pulled up in the family car and retrieved her sobbing son from the church steps. To this day, I have no idea how my mother knew to seek her melancholy son that day. My mom comforted and cheered me on, and after some of her home cooking, I was soon able to accept my fate for the week.

In football, my mother would occasionally come to my football games to root for me. I always knew when she was in attendance because I could hear her yelling for me, by name, over the voices of the rest of the fans. I must admit, as an adolescent, I was a little embarrassed to hear my mother enthusiastically yelling for me.

In one football game, our quarterback called a trick play. The play was designed to be a fake run and then a pass to me. The play went off without a hitch and I caught the ball and scored a touchdown. However, I was badly injured by a blindsided hit of an opposing player. This day there would be no riding home with friends and no cheeseburger and fries after the game. I was traveling 70 miles back to my hometown in an ambulance.

When the ambulance arrived back at our local hospital, my parents were standing on the sidewalk of the emergency room waiting for our arrival. On this occasion there was a role reversal; my mother was now the one inconsolable and weeping. I was indeed hurt and spent three long months in the hospital recuperating. Of course, in a short time, my mother put her grief aside and became a major cheerleader for my recovery.

Unfortunately, my cheerleading mother was prematurely taken by pancreatic cancer at age 59. My mom wasn’t perfect, but she was a great cheerleader. It was natural and easy for her to encourage others and that is what I remember most about her now.

I agree with what Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My mother’s cheery advocacy for her boys, and how safe I felt around her, was what I remember most about her.

We live in a world where encouragement and personal advocacy for others is rare. It is, however, very simple to stand with others and be their cheerleader. It doesn’t require a counseling degree to be encouraging to others. To be sure, this neglected artform is amazingly helpful and needed. I can’t think of a downside to cheering others on. In fact, when we take our eyes off our own troubles to help others, often it eases our own discouragement or pain.

So, reader friend, here is your assignment. Find someone who is going through a tough patch in life and speak a few words of encouragement to them. Speak a kind word, give them a smile, or even send them a handwritten note in the mail. You might save their life, and in the process, you will certainly enrich yours.

Sid Roberts is the mayor of Stanwood.