A gas station. Rural east Texas. A young man sits in front of the ice machine, and he’s babbling nonsense. He is shirtless. He is dirty. People pass him as they walk into the convenience store.

But one old man doesn’t.

Because this old man has been homeless before. He knows what’s going on. The old man knows that about 30 percent of homeless persons are mentally ill. He knows that 30 percent are addicted. He knows this kid is probably blitzed out of his gourd on a substance.

The old man knows all this because he was once that guy.

The old man makes a few calls. In a few minutes an Episcopal priest and a few other church members are standing before the young shirtless man. They are asking him if he has anywhere to spend the night. They’re offering him a hand.

The young man sees the priest’s collar and he starts to cry.

“Please help me,” the kid sobs. “I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

Within

minutes, the kid is taken to the hospital. An anonymous donor pays for him to visit rehab. The kid is clean within a month. That was 15 years ago. Today, the kid is an employee at the same rehab that saved him.

Cincinnati. Her family moved to this town for work. After a year, she learned her husband was having an affair. Her competition was a 22-year-old. She caught them in the act. And she almost had a nervous breakdown.

After the divorce, she never thought she would love again. So she raised kids on her own. She got a job working at K-Mart. She disappeared into the throngs of working-class Americans.

Until she met Ron. Ron was a widower with three kids of his own. He worked in the stock room. He was cute. One day, he worked up the nerve to ask her out. He asked…

Happy 11th birthday, Becca. I hope you eat enough cake to qualify as a misdemeanor.

There is one thing I want you to remember on this wondrous day:

Whenever you think you’ve had too much cake, whenever you think your tummy can’t hold any more, force yourself to eat ONE more teensy-weensy little slice.

Because one can never eat enough cake.

Being 11 is pretty fun. It is, however, the beginning of the end. Because next year you’ll be 12, well on your way to teenagehood. And you’ll suddenly know it all.

When I was 13, I thought my mother was so incredibly ignorant it was staggering. Then I turned 20 and I was shocked at how much my mother had learned in those seven years.

But you aren’t like me. I was a dense boy. You, on the other hand, are a wise child.

You’ve been through a lot in your life. Your story isn’t mine to tell, but I’ll hit the highlights:

Your biological mother was an addict. You were left lying on your

backside for the first several months of your infancy so that the back of your head was flat. You are blind.

But you were adopted by unbelievably beautiful parents, and you have become the most impressive person I have ever met. Hands down.

For starters, after you went blind, you could have given up. You could have quit trying. Instead, you started taking up new life skills.

You tried out for your school play and landed a major role. You wrote poetry. You took up new musical instruments such as the harp, the cigar-box guitar, the piano, and you started taking singing lessons. You started learning braille.

I’ll never forget when we first met. We were at a restaurant. And do you know what I noticed about you first? You laughed a lot.

You laughed without abandon. Without holding back. You cackled good and…