After dodging the Des Moines rush hour traffic I turned on a quiet road and my spirits were renewed when I noticed baseball fields and stacked bats at the entryway to the stellar park. River Woods is surprisingly out in the open and doesn't appear as if it is a city school. The previous week, the Harlem Globetrotters had visited River Woods and I-Hops had donated breakfast for the students. Pancakes, spinning basketballs and the Harlem Globetrotters - I had a daunting task ahead of me if I were to compete with such a formidable force of basketball celebrities.

Mrs. Lorentzen greeted me and was pleased with the number of book orders she had received. My chief source of revenue are book sales, and I receive zero sponsorship dollars for my travel expenses. So I was pleased that Mrs. Lorentzen had taken the time out of her busy schedule to help me in my pursuit of raising money for free books to be given away at Principal Park.

Our first challenge was in the lunchroom. The tables and chairs were in the way. The janitor and I had just 15 minutes to move all 20 tables and stack a few hundred chairs to the sides. It was a good thing we had completed the task in time because the K-2 students had arrived and I had about one feet from my audience to where I stood to speak. The closeness didn't seem to bother the students. We had fun and one young lady's dream stood out: She said, "My dream is to one day live in a mansion." After my speech was over this same young lady came up to me and said, "I wasn't telling you a joke. My dream IS to one day live in a mansion."

By the time I was complete at River Woods, I had just 30 minutes to drive back to the city for my next speaking engagement at Carver. Carver Elementary is impressive. It appears like a corporate headquarters and the Boys and Girls Club is attached to the school. The entryway to the school is open and airy and brings in warm sunlight.

Betty Wolfe greeted me and assisted me with my things to the new gym, which is as large as any high school gym. There were so many students for the first speech that we filled half the court. The students were so excited by being able to confess their dreams that I had difficulty sometimes speaking over the rush of noise. But when I began reading about Creeper and his magic glass eye, all the attention focused back on me.

What impressed me about Mrs. Wolfe is that she stayed for both speeches and I once glanced over her way and saw her holding one young student with the same care she might hold her own child. I was comforted by her compassion for her students.

I'm usually not biased when it comes to handing out free hats, but this one young man screamed with such intensity for the free X Games hat that when he was callled on to scream again he had lost his voice. Still my young actor persisted through a tiny squeal, twirled, and giggled uncontrollably with joy upon receipt of his hat.

I have been offered such a rare gift by so many students and teachers. However, sometimes these touching moments aren't direct. Sometimes the moment comes after my speech. I opened the large envelope that contained the book money along with special sayings I was supposed to autograph for the many students' books. The bundled five and one dollar bills along with the jingling of nearly twenty dollars worth of coins rendered me speechless because it wasn't too hard to figure out that this money was money students had saved up no doubt from weekly allowances.

Over and over again students have asked me: "Are you famous? Are you rich?"

I clutched the precious, tattered one dollar bills - with some five dollar bills having been taped or folded over and over again to fit in the slot of a piggy bank - and I thought about the students' favorite saying and finally breathed out, "Yes, I am famous. Yes, I am rich. At least in your eyes I am...."

Thank you River Woods and Carver for giving me your best and brightest.