Want to skip church this Sunday?

A pastor, apparently disgusted with the excuses parishioners offered as to why they didn’t attend worship services, included “Reasons Why I Never Wash” in the Sunday bulletin:

• I was forced to as a child.
• People who wash are hypocrites - they think they are cleaner than everybody else.
• There are so many different kinds of soap; I can’t decide which one is best.
• I used to wash, but I got bored and stopped.
• I wash only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.
• None of my friends wash.
• I’ll start washing when I get older and dirtier.
• I can’t spare the time.
• The bathroom is never warm enough in the winter or cool enough in the summer.
• People who make soap are only after your money.
• I don’t like the songs people sing in the bathroom.
• I can clean myself perfectly well whenever I pass a sink, so I don’t need a bathtub.
• I know how to stay clean without washing.
• The last time I washed, someone was rude to me.
• What I do doesn’t affect anybody but me.
• I know someone who washes every day and still smells bad.
• I don’t believe in soap. I sat beside a whole case of it for an hour once, and nothing happened.
• Washing was invented by people who knew nothing about science.
• If people saw me without my makeup, they would laugh at me.
• I’m so dirty now that if I washed, the drain would clog.
• Cats, dogs, and chickens never wash, and they are happy all the time.
• Prehistoric humans were happy all the time until the first soap salesman made them feel guilty.
• If I start washing again, my friends will think I am trying to conform to middle-class standards.
• Washing is for women and children.
• Washing is for people much dirtier than I am.
• I will wash when I find the bathroom that is exactly right for me.
• I only believe in things I can see, and I can’t see bacteria.
• Children need to see that it is OK to be different.
• Children need a few bad examples.
• Washing may have been OK in my grandfather’s day, but it’s not practical in today’s world. 
• I watch other people washing on TV.
• There are lots of clean people who never wash.
• We’ve just moved here six years ago and I haven’t had a chance.
• I bought a bad bar of soap once, so I swore I would never wash again!
• I feel as close to washing on the golf course as I do in the bathroom.
• I never wash when I have company.
• Washday is the only day I have to sleep in.
• My wife washes enough for the whole family.
• I know people who wash but don’t act very clean.
• Washing is the opiate of the masses.

You want fries with that? Or a lug wrench?

A man named Brian Hall was at a Chick-fil-A near Chattanooga, Tennessee, recently. While he was waiting in the drive-thru lane, he realized he had a flat tire. When restaurant employees saw his predicament, two of them hurried outside to his car.

Hall was amazed when they brought a hydraulic jack with them. They put on his spare tire for him and took a photo for Facebook. Oh, they also brought his food while he waited, but it got cold while they were changing his tire, so they replaced it with fresh food and tossed in two free cookies. Will he dine there again? You bet.

When a teacher becomes a parent

Robert Hurley was born in New Port Richey, Florida, where he spent most of his childhood in a two-bedroom trailer. His mom was a drug dealer, and his dad was a drug addict. When Robert was six, his father left the family. By the time Robert was a freshman at Boca Ciega High School, he'd been living in a St. Petersburg foster home and was being asked to move away. He mentioned this to his geometry teacher, Amy Krusemark, and everything suddenly changed for the better.

"It seems pretty preposterous that someone so sweet and loving would be in a system so long," she thought. As a foster parent herself, with two empty room at home, she approached Robert and told him, "I want to help you be you." She soon became his legal guardian, and he moved in. Since then, things have worked out pretty well. Now 18, Hurley has a 4.6 GPA and was valedictorian of his graduating class. He's received FULL-RIDE scholarship offers from Yale, Stanford and Duke, and has chosen Stanford. All because his geometry teacher did more than teach. She loved.

From janitor to nurse

Frank Baez, 29, moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic when he was 15. He barely spoke any English, but managed to find a job as a janitor at NYU's nursing school to support his family. The janitor job got him interested in medicine. So he applied for another job, as a patient transporter, wheeling people around for tests.. And the patients loved him.

He eventually left that job to get a Bachelor's degree at Hunter College. He was the first person in his family to graduate from college. But he knew he wanted to work in healthcare, so he applied to NYU, the same school where he worked as a janitor. This month he got his nursing degree.

teen risks life to help man in wheelchair

Gregory Beck was on his way to his St. Louis, Missouri, home recently when tornado sirens sounded. Beck lost both legs and is legally blind, so it would take him 15 minutes to get home from the supermarket if he stopped 10 times to rest. "Everyone kept telling me the storm was coming and you need to hurry up and get home," he said.

While other motorists honked and yelled at Beck as he tried to cross the street, 16-year-old Seth Phillips and his mother stopped their car so Seth could get out and push Beck the rest of the way home. "Just the greatest people," said Beck afterward, "and very concerned about other people, which America needs to start doing more of."

A postman who delivered more than mail, much more.

Floyd Martin has been delivering mail to residents of Marietta, Georgia, for the past 20 years. He retired from his route this month, and probably expected a few handshakes or a cake to send him off. But instead, neighbors along his route decorated their mailboxes in his honor. They give him gifts and threw a tearful block party where they recalled his many kindnesses -- how he always picks up the newspaper and brings it to the door of elderly residents, and feeds neighborhood cats, and always has lollipops in his pocket for children. How much did the children on his route love him?  On Career Day at school, little Mae Bullington dressed up as "Mister Floyd the Postman." He said he was flattered, and it really touched his heart.

For all these years, Martin has dreamed of visiting Hawaii. A GoFundMe page was launched by one of his customers, and quickly reached $13,000. That should be more than enough, since Delta Air Lines called and offered to fly him to Hawaii for free. Why didn't he retire sooner? "I could have left them a long time ago," he explained, "but I wouldn't....because I love them."

Graduating from high school and college the same day

Braxton Moral is 17 and lives in a tiny town in southwest Kansas. When he was younger, he totally skipped the fourth grade but still felt bored at school. So his parents enrolled him in a few classesat local universities.

When he was 11, they signed him up for classes through Harvard's extention program, so he could take classes online too. This month he graduated from both high school and Harvard University. Now he plans to go to law school. He's not the first kid-genius to graduate from Harvard early, but he's the first kid to successfully pursue a four-year-high school degree, and a Bachelor's degree from Harvard at the same time.