The World Is Yours
IllustrationStory★★★★Comedian David Brenner came from a poor but close family. When he graduated from high school, however, he was given an unforgettable gift.
“Some of my friends got new clothes and a few rich kids even got new cars,” he remembers. “My father reached into his pocket and took something out. I extended my hand, palm up, and he let my present drop into it—a nickel! Dad said to me, ‘Buy a newspaper with that.
Read every word of it. Then turn to the classified section and get yourself a job.
Get into the world. It’s all yours now.’ I always thought that was a great joke my father had played on me, until a few years later when I was in the Army, sitting in a foxhole and thinking about my family and my life.
It was then I realized that my friends had only gotten new cars and clothes. My father had given me the whole world. What greater gift!”
The point
A father gives his son a nickel for a newspaper to get a job and enter the world; the son later realizes this simple gift gave him the entire world—better than his friends' cars and clothes.