Student Greg Richards was walking home from school and looking forward to a fun-filled weekend of parties and playing football when he noticed another student was struggling with a huge amount of books.
Greg thought to himself: ‘Why would anyone bring home all his books on Friday? He must really be a nerd.’
The athletic student was then shocked when he watched a group of young boys knock the bookworm’s belongings out of his hands before tripping him up so he fell in the dirt.
‘My heart went out to him,’ said Greg, and he helped the boy up.
‘Those guys are jerks,’ Greg told his fallen fellow student. ‘They really should get lives.’
Greg asked him where he lived and it turned out the pair lived close by to each other.
The boys name was Kyle, and it turned out he and Greg had a lot in common. Greg even invited Kyle to play football with him and his friends the next day.
The pair established a friendship within the space of a weekend, and when Greg saw Kyle with the tower of books again on Monday, he joked: ‘Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books every day!’
Kyle just laughed.
The pair remained friends throughout high school. Kyle became popular and he even turned into a bit of a ladies man.
Clever Kyle even finished as the top student in their class.
As they finished high school, Kyle found out he had been accepted to study medicine in Washington DC and Greg was set to move to North Carolina to play football at prestigious Duke University.
Speaking at graduation, Kyle revealed that Greg had saved him from doing the unthinkable.
The day Greg and Kyle met, Kyle was miserable.
He was planning to kill himself that weekend.
Kyle was carrying a pile of books home as he had cleared out his locker out to make it ‘easier’ for his mother.
Kyle turned to Greg and smiled: ‘My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable.’
Kyle’s story just goes to show that the smallest acts of kindness can make the most profound difference to someone’s life.
They can even save a life.