Johnny the bagger

Johnny is a grocery store bagger who has Down syndrome. He heard from
one of the grocery store people about how people can make a difference
but he thought he couldn't do anything special for the customers
because he was just a bagger. But then he had an idea:
'he decided that every night when he came home fro work, he would find
a 'thought for the day' for his next shift. It would be something
positive, some reminder of how good it was to be alive, or how much
people matter, or how many gifts we are surrounded by. If he couldn't
find one, he would make one up.
Every night his dad would help him enter the saying six times on a
page on the computer; then Johnny would print fifty pages. He would
take out a pair of scissors and carefully cut three hundred copies and
sign every one.
Johnny put the stack of pages next to him while he worked. Each time
he finished bagging someone's groceries, he would put his saying on
top of the last bag. Then he would stop what he was doing, look the
person straight in the eye, and say, 'I've put a great saying in your
bag. I hope it helps you have a good day. Thanks for coming here.'
A month later, the store manager found that the line at Johnny's
checkout was three times longer than anyone else's. It went all the
way down the frozen food aisle.
The manager got on the loudspeaker to get more checkout lines open,
but he couldn't get any of the customers to move. They said, 'That's
okay. We'll wait. We want to be in Johnny's line.' One woman came
up to him and grabbed his hand, saying, 'I used to shop in your store
once a week. Now I come in every time I go by--I want to get Johnny's
thought for the day.' Johnny is doing more than filling bags with
groceries; he is filling lives with hope.-excerpt from 'When the game
is over it all goes back in the box' by John Ortberg