Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
lena. Why were they making fun of him? It was his show that had
gotten them on the international news. Tonight she was worried to
find no reruns. According to Harry’s report, he was supposed to be
in Rangoon today. He was moving farther away, and yet watching
him every other hour had made her feel that they were emotionally
close.
My other friends had turned their attention to a Global News
Network special. They were watching interviews about themselves,
padded with comments from family and friends. For the next hour,
they learned there were heroes and heroines among them. Who knew
that Heidi had discovered the body of her murdered boyfriend? No
wonder she was so cautious yet, they now understood with appreci­
ation, skillfully prepared. He was a housemate not a boyfriend, she
tried to explain, and they praised her even more for downplaying her
trauma.
They also had not known—not even Roxanne—that Dwight had
served for three years as a Big Brother to a kid who had been bullied
in grade school and had become a truant to escape the torment. The
former kid was now a young man on a track scholarship at Stanford
and, inspired by Dwight’s example, also a volunteer at an after-
school program for troubled teens. (The kid had not seen Dwight for
ten years or so. He had told Dwight he was the biggest bully of them
all, which had left Dwight embittered about the whole experience.)
Vera, they discovered, had two grown children, who recalled the
time she gave money to the disadvantaged in lieu of buying Christ­
mas presents. (Vera had actually bought them bicycles but not the
boom boxes they wanted.) They’d been angry at the time, they ad­
mitted, but later they realized, as one of them said, that “she was as
much a saint then as she is today.”
Whatever portion of truth those televised comments held, hearing
them moved my friends to tears and increased their affection for one
another. They hugged the recipient of each tribute. From now on,
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