Once there was a little girl who had most everything a child could want. Her family wasn’t rich, but she had a nice home, nice clothes, lots of games and stuff to play with, and plenty of good food to eat. She didn’t always get everything she wanted, but she never had to do without things she needed.
One year, around Thanksgiving her mother was busier than usual gathering items for Thanksgiving baskets for poor families. She wondered why her mom made such a big deal out of it, and she was even a little bit upset that her mother was already starting to work on Christmas stuff for other families.
“You haven’t even started working on Christmas for us!” she said with a pout.
Her mother told her that Christmas would be as nice as it had always been and explained that she wanted it to be nice for other people too. Ellen still didn’t get it. Her mother didn’t even know these people. She wondered if her mother had ever even seen a poor person. She knew that she hadn’t ever seen one.
Not long after that she was happily eating lunch at school one day, enjoying the cookies her mom baked especially for her. She talked and laughed with her friends, but suddenly she noticed a little girl crying. The girl was really little, and Ellen wondered what she was doing in the lunchroom during the big kids’ lunch. She also wondered why she was crying.
At first, she thought she should just ignore the girl, mind her own business, but the girl just seemed so sad. Ellen walked over and asked her what was wrong. The girl seemed startled and brushed at her tears.
“Nothing. Leave me alone.”
Ellen kept asking questions. Where was her lunch? Why was she here for this lunch period? Why was she crying?
The girl finally told Ellen that she was in the same grade, and that she looked small because she had lost a lot of weight. Her dad lost his job.
“That’s what free lunch is for,” Ellen huffed. “Sign up for free lunch.”
The girl sobbed. She had already eaten her lunch, but she was still hungry. There was very little to eat at home, since her parents were struggling just to pay bills and keep from losing the house. Free lunch was often the only meal she had each day, and she was hungry!
(continued next page)