Have you ever heard the phrase, "Nice matters?" Let me tell you a little thing about this guy, named Ron, pictured above with my sister Sharon This is during a silly game in high school.
Here is a picture of me in 10th grade. What you don't see are the dark-rimmed glasses I had to wear, which I removed for the photo. I looked a bit like a geek. My first year in high school I was scared to death to walk up and down the halls. I knew that I had the wrong clothes and the wrong hair style, and that if I should say something it would be stupid. Every day this guy named Ron, a really friendly popular boy, always surrounded by lots of girls, would see me in the hall and just say, "Hey, how's it going?" He always made me feel like I was worth speaking to. He already had a girlfriend, and I was certainly nothing to look at my sophomore year, so obviously he was not hitting on me. 
Ron is in the upper right grinning in the above photo. Each day that I walked down those halls afraid of my own shadow, there he'd be, with this huge grin, saying, "Hey, Kathi, how's your day going?" It would change my day from cloudy to sunny in that instant. I could get through the day, because he said, "Hello to me." People may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. Years later I got to be one of the bride's maids at his wedding. Thanks Ron for being nice to a wall flower girl. I'm sorry I didn't see you at the reunion.
