As I finished off the book, I thought that the last couple chapters were as good as the rest. We hear again from both Sean and Leigh Anne, as well as from their son, S.J. Again, the book goes back to the idea of cheerful giving and to the message of sharing the wealth. Sean and Leigh Anne tried to send their message of giving to others not only to the other people within their community, but also to their children. In the chapters written by Collins and S.J., it is apparent that they are extremely grounded children who have a great sense of who they are. While their family is definitely well off, these are not spoiled rotten kids, but they understand the idea of charity and of giving a part of oneself to others. This mentality has caused them to be truly good kids who never complained about having to “share” their lifestyle with someone else. In the chapter by S.J., he talks about how Michael was not the first person who came and slept on their couch. The Tuohys had many people come to their house to have a place to stay, so having Michael was nothing out of the ordinary for them. S.J. would constantly be open to this and would never get angry that there was someone using his things or playing on his Xbox. Instead, he would play with them and make them feel comfortable. Yet again, this makes me really inspired to be more like the Tuohys and not to take advantage of the things that I have. I am similar to S.J. in the fact that I live a nice lifestyle and have many luxuries in my life, but I aspire to be more like him and to give back like their family does. In the last chapter of the book, I read about something that Leigh Anne did that really made me feel good and made me realize how good of a person she is. There were many children from an opposing school who were unable to attend one of the basketball games because of a lack of funding. Leigh Anne realized that this was the reason that there were so few people attending the game and she decided to pay for busses to bring these children over to the game. Simple things like this are things that really can make a child feel better about themselves and can make someone’s day. This family is such an amazing family because they are so selfless; they think about others way before they think about themselves.
I thought what you said about S.J really brought out the personality of Micheal in the long run. Their influence made him the man that he was. As much as I know, from the movie, Micheal was always a shy big guy who didn't take anyone for granted. He was respected for giving respect. The Touhy's did a great thing by taking someone truly deserving and giving him the opportunity of a lifetime. What makes the Touhys so special is that they did this regardless of his size or his future. They were only looking at the person inside who was struggling and had nowhere to go. This makes the Touhys special. Nothing was in it for them, and they were most certainly not after the fame like some people in the movies suggest.
ReplyDeleteI think you definitely brought up a great point. What they were doing was selfless. They knew that they were going to receive a ton of criticism for what they were doing, but this did not phase them. They received a lot of crap from people who thought that it was weird that they were a wealthy white family allowing a large black man to be living in their house, especially with a teenage daughter. They decided to ignore these ignorant people and do what they knew in their hearts was the right thing. I think that this is an extremely important point to recognize. They could have easily decided that this was too much for them and simply written a check and felt the satisfaction that they donated to charity. Instead, they decided to do something that would physically impact someone's life, even though it wasn't the easy thing to do.
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