I try to leave the work-week on a high note. Our news/talk morning show receives a constant stream of texts and if we get a terrific one near the end of the show on a Friday, I’ll close the text window and just soak it in like a mental bubble bath. It’s a relief from the barrage of political rants, wackos and those who want the radio station to return to the way it was in the 1960s.
A few Fridays ago, the last text I saw made me stop and think: Why isn’t there ever any good news? We hear that from time to time and usually dismiss it. For starters, that’s not what news is. Most people are good. The news is about the unusual and the anomalies in the world. Unfortunately, some people don’t know how to digest the news. They think that if one person is doing something, everyone like them is the same. It’s a sad fact that many people don’t put the bad stuff in context. Still, I went home thinking about the balance between pessimism and optimism and how a few rays of light are sorely needed in this politically dark time in which we are living.
Later that day I received a Linked In request from a stranger – Owen Armstrong. Owen is a nine-year-old entrepreneur with a whole lot of heart, so I linked. Owen was moved by the plight of families who had a child fighting cancer after his older brother developed leukemia. With the help of his Dad, Owen made a bench (a child-height step-stool) out of pine and painted it as a gift for his family. Others who saw it were so impressed that they ordered benches, too, and the Nice Bench Company was born. Owen’s benches are custom-painted and sold in some stores up in the Muskoka area and one in east-end Toronto. He also sells them online and ships them anywhere, with $10 from each bench going to families dealing with childhood cancer.
Talk about turning the tide of texts – Owen was articulate, informative and, well, adorable, and the listener response was terrific. I couldn’t resist ordering a bench as a gift for some little people in my life. And we couldn’t help but think about what we were doing when we were nine. We certainly weren’t doing media interviews about our own company. Owen Armstrong wants to be a businessman when he grows up and he’s already got a great start on his resume. His older brother is doing well and now works for the Nice Bench Co.. So, there’s a little good news to balance out the head-shaking, heartbreaking business of being a grown-up in 2017.