Make-A-Wish kid's super hero wish comes true

Wow, that is awesome.

But did Electron Boy kill Blackout Boy there at the end? Kind of violent! :-)

Dr. Dark, Blackout Boy...weird choice of villain names for that poor little tyke to face down.

That is truly unbelievable. Outstanding work by everybody, especially shutting down a HIGHWAY to pull this off. Holy shit

So awesome.

Faith in Humanity: restored.

Ha, just linked this on my Facebook page and used Savage's exact words. Great stuff. My Grinchy heart grew three sizes after reading this.

Wow. Just chiming in to echo everybody's sentiments. Awesome indeed. And I did get a little verklempt reading the story.

This is probably the first time someone has used this in a non-cynical manner since Ron Burgundy.

You stay classy Seattle.

Wow. What a fantastic story.

They get made fun of a lot, but Make A Wish can do this shit right.

I SAW THIS POLICE ESCORT DRIVE BY ME when I was walking my dog! I was wondering what the hell a DeLorean was doing driving along 20 police motorcycles. Thanks for clearing up the mystery. That's awesome.

Ok, bully for the sick kid, that is indeed awesome!

Quick MAKE A WISH foundation question though..

I hate to be the spoil sport here, but is there something slightly distasteful about going to extravagant lengths to make sure a terminally ill first world child has a magical experience, when the money used to make him feel like a million bucks could be spent on mosquito netting/food ETC in order to save thousands of other third world kids who would die from preventable illnesses and squalid conditions?

I ask not because I'm a bitch, but because I saw a thing on CNN where a kid with cancer made it his mission to feed the homeless. Why not make this kid a real hero by putting him on a plane and letting him help feed hungry people or deliver medicine to sick orphans?

Why don't you donate all the money you make minus essentials and all your free time to buying mosquito netting or feeding the hungry non-stop all the time?

Don't go changin'.

If this story don't warm your heart you have no soul.

Awesome story.

I was a goner by the first paragraph, and then...

Wonderful.

Because he's thirteen, he looks like he's eight, and he has cancer.

How could any lengths to make a dying child feel wonderful be distasteful?!?!?

And yet....

I hate to say it, but Princess Kate kind of has a point. Yet, at the same time it misses the point of organizations like Make-A-Wish, but even I sometimes wonder if that money could be used to help keep even more children alive in less fortunate countries.

Awesome story, but PKs question is a valid (and humane) one.

It's an idiotic question, different charity organizations have different goals and methods to achieve those goals. That's the whole point of having diverse charities to cater to different needs.

There's always somebody poorer help, a more urgent disease to find a cure for, or a greater injustice to make right. So there are thousands of organizations, and based on what you value or how effective they are they all cater to different needs. Same here. You can't look at this money as one exclusive pool of money, and think that this is taking money away that are starving, that's an absurd way to look at things.

Every time I see somebody bring up a similar point, I really wonder what these people do in the first place to help humanity (the answer is almost always nothing). If you're going to criticize an organization for using the money it gets to achieve its goal, do you also question yourself with that money you're wasting in movie tickets and other form of entertainment?

If you are consistent, life must be a torment for you unless you are constantly giving everything to the less fortunate, 24/7.

Really amazing story.

I had a friend whose daughter had Lymphoma. The Make a Wish red tape took so long she was perfectly healthy by the time her wish was granted. Because she's a good girl she decided to change her wish to a plane ticket to visit her grandparents instead of a trip to Disney World since she wasn't sick anymore.

Not quite for me but that still makes me go a big old blubbery one I have to say.

Really lovely.

I bet the kid who wanted to meet Elmo feels REALLY stupid right now.

EDIT: Or this kid who JUST WANTED TO SEE SNOW. He really blew his wish.

Stupid? Hell, I wanna meet Elmo...

so he can introduce me to The Count and Snuffy.

Snuffys not real. He's Big Birds Tyler Durden.

SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They retconned that ages ago. He's real these days.

I know, but I'm a child of my generation. He'll always be Birds imaginary friend to me. It was always so much more interesting that way.

What an awesome story.

Wait. I thought Snuffy was always real. Wasn't it that the adults just kept missing him all the time?

Come to think of it, I felt pretty bad for Big Bird. The adults always treated him like a liar.

Not really a liar but everyone started to think he was a bit soft in the head tho - they were very condescending.

...and the thing was, up until the retcon, you never knew if Snuffy WAS real or not because he was only ever in scenes with BB and disappeared (very conveniently I might add - my favourite was when he jumped too high on a trampoline when Luis walked in) any time someone else turned up. Just like Tyler Durden I might add.

In this analogy who's Marla then?

Just put that on my FB page as well. Great, great story.

Mr. Hooper.

I wish I had terminal cancer so I could ask the Foundation to smash Princess Kate's computer to pieces.

Doug,

Well you would have to request her mom's computer to be smashed pieces even though it's only a 56k which makes some pages tough to load but her dad's computer is broadband and you'd have to request if both computers could be smashed which would even increase the red tape by the Foundation. Doug maybe instead of wishing for cancer you should wish for people in third world countries to have food while I do a review of Little Caesar's pizza

You're scaring me, Scott.

You cut off my sentence at the midpoint and just reacted to everything before the comma! Read the rest to find the answer to your question

Thanks



Look,

As stated, good for the kid. Very cool

There is just a part of me though that feels it's weird to spend so much on a kid who will already die no matter what when that money could be spent ensuring that other kids who don't have to die stay alive.

Now, I know that some will say "Different organizations, different purposes!" Fine. But that's pretending that the "mosquito nets for kids" organization has that problem totally solved, and MAKE A WISH is just picking up the slack on the other end. It's not. Kids die all the time in third world countries from preventable diseases. So, in reality, when you choose to give money to MAKE A WISH and not UNICEF, you are choosing to make sure that a first world kid will have a better death than they otherwise would have, while other kids are going die because you didn't give them your aid money.


That's just the truth. I was just asking if people were ok with that. Anyway, again, I am not against the cancer child who got to be a super hero. I have a heart and was touched by that. My question is purely about the morality of the charity that sponsored it.

<needs to find green box to give to Scott>

You can borrow mine:

At the end of the day that kid aint gonna pull through, why not make the few memories he will have special?

No, it's not.

I've been pretty neutral about you so far, Kate. Ignoring most everything you say and not getting into the mix, but this for some reason irked me to no end. This is stupidity to a far higher degree than I ever hoped existed outside of political extremists.

I agree! I just wish we could find a better way to do it. If he wants to be cheered as a hero and have people stand up and applaud him, I'm serious: let him help feed third worlders. Imagine how awesome it would feel to bring food to people who need it and have them celebrate you for your efforts. If he is not going to make it, than at least at the end he can look back adn say "I did that"

Instead what MAKE A WISH did just feels like a bit of expensive stage craft

I don't know, maybe I'm a horrible person, but that's just how I see it.

I think it's an awesome story. Brought a little tear to my eye, I tell you.

The smashing of Kate's computer, I mean.

Electro-Boy, that was cool too.

It would be awesome but the charity is all about making his wishes come true and lets be honest that wouldn't be his wish.

I don't want to derail here, I just wanted to explain my opinion. I've done that and then explained my thinking more.

So I'll just make this my last word on the subject and say that you're going to have to tell me how not giving money to people, when it could save their life, is not not saving their life. Yes, there is something else you're spending it on. That's fine. It's a judgment call and a question of priorities I guess. But that is the situation as far as I see it

Anyway I don't want to make enemies on the board (I like you guys!) so please don't take offense at my opinion.

Kate, that would make sense if what the kid had always dreamed about was helping people in third world countries. But in this case, he loved comic books and dreamed of being a superhero.

EDIT: Gah, beaten to it.