From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is my unsung hero, stories where one person reached

out to help another in a time of need.

I don't know the name of my unsung hero.

And here she was trying to encourage me that it was going to be all right. Thank you.

You will forever be my own sung hero.

Today's story comes from Rich Addison.

So when I was young, I was very shy. I was an only child who was pretty comfortable talking to adults, but I never had any brothers and sisters to practice on so I wasn't very good at kind of mixing

it up with the other kids.

And I remember being very anxious about going to school and on Sunday nights I would not be able to sleep

just worrying about what would happen with the other kids. So now flash forward a few years and I'm in

high school and I realized that I had to be different that I couldn't keep being so shy.

So I went about developing a quick wit and a sense of humor

that would keep other kids off balance

so I wouldn't have to feel powerless.

You know how sometimes people say the best defense is a good offense, well that was what I was doing.

But the sense of humor I developed was kind of biting

and kind of critical.

So now my hero is about to come into the story and this was my friend Holly.

And one day Holly and I were talking and she said to me, you know, Rich, sometimes you really hurt people's feelings.

And at first I was just shocked. I said to myself, that can't be true. I was entertaining, I made people laugh, I liked people, these were my friends. I didn't want to hurt them. I couldn't be hurting them.

But I kept thinking about what Holly said and I kept turning it over in my mind and eventually I realized

that she was absolutely right and I started paying attention to how my humor was affecting other people and I changed it.

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