It took until I was fully an adult to appreciate just how much my folks did for me as a kid. Not only did they make sure I always, always, had a full belly, but that I was brought up to be a good, nice person. Well, I try, anyway.
But since then, I’ve seen how bad some kids have it, even when their folks are trying their best. It’s a rough world out there, but kids definitely don’t deserve to bear the brunt of it.
That’s why we need more Josette and Dylan Durans.
If Josette Duran ever wondered if she was raising her son with good values, he sure alleviated those worries one morning.
Early in his eighth grade school year, Dylan asked his mom if she could make him two lunches that day.
She wondered if he just wasn’t getting enough to eat, which does happen with growing boys sometimes.
But, as Dylan explained, the extra lunch wasn’t for him.
“Mom, it’s for this boy,” she recalled Dylan saying at the time. “He only eats a fruit cup for lunch can you make him lunch too? I don’t think he has lunch money.”
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How could she say no to that?
But Josette didn’t just make an extra lunch for one day. She sent Dylan off with that extra lunch every day for weeks. “It became my normal,” she told Today .
Along the way, Josette discovered that the other boy’s mother had lost her job, something Josette knew about intimately.
“This hits home to me because a few years ago, me and my son were homeless,” Josette told KCCI . “I was living in my car and I was washing him in bathrooms. And we didn’t have food.”
Eventually, Devin’s friend started receiving lunches under a federal program, which Josette found bittersweet.
“It feels kind of lonely not making two anymore,” she told Today. And when the other boy’s mother did find a job, she tried to pay Josette back for her kindness.
However, Josette refused to take the money.
Even when the girl’s volleyball team Josette coaches raised $400 to pay her back, Josette wouldn’t take it. Instead, she took the cash straight down to the school’s cafeteria.
“We paid up all the past due accounts for all the kids who need lunch.”
“So now, nobody in that school owes any money, and now everyone can eat,” she told KCCI. So Josette certainly set a good example for her son, and as she says, it has paid off.
“I was taught if you can’t be nice, then you be extra nicer, and I’ve always raised my son to be that way. I’ve always taught him to be kind and help others.”
“Dylan really is the most kindhearted and loving kid,” she said. “When he asked me to make two lunches, I just did it. I didn’t ask any questions because isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? We’re supposed to help people.”
