upworthy
Badge
Macy's
Macy's
More

A little boy had a unique request for Make-A-Wish: to be a garbage man.

Like a lot of kids who work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, 6-year-old Ethan Dean desperately wanted to meet one of his heroes.

Ethan has cystic fibrosis, which can make life pretty challenging. But that hasn't stopped him from doing a lot of the stuff his friends do: singing, taking music classes, and even playing soccer.

But while other kids his age might dream of meeting star athletes, rock stars, and superheroes, Ethan looks up to a different kind of hero all together:

The men and women who keep our streets clean.

Ethan has been fascinated with garbage trucks and the everyday heroes who operate them for as long as his parents can remember.

Riding off into the sunset. Photo via iStock.

His dad, Ken, said that even as an infant and toddler, Ethan was fascinated by the trucks.

"Whenever he'd hear the garbage truck picking up trash cans outside, he'd come running up or down the stairs to look at it. From there, eventually, I would take him outside to watch."

And it wasn't Hot Wheels or G.I. Joes that Ethan wanted come Christmas time. He had an entire collection of toy garbage haulers that kept him occupied for hours on end.

"He'd play around and take small pieces of paper and put them in the back of the trucks and take them to the 'dump,'" Ken said.

"I want to be a garbage man when I grow up," said Ethan. "It's awesome!"

So Make-A-Wish teamed up with Waste Management in Sacramento, California, to bring Ethan's dream to life.

All photos by XSiGHT Studio and used with permission, unless otherwise specified.

"I think they were very surprised," Ken said about the moment Make-A-Wish learned about Ethan's ... different request.

But they pulled it together in tremendous fashion.

On the big day in late July, a huge crowd of people surprised Ethan outside his elementary school and cheered him on.

The mayor of Sacramento was even on hand to give Ethan a key to the city.

Then, Ethan suited up in uniform.

He hopped into a truck with his name on the side in huge letters — Ethan's Garbage Truck — and headed off on his great adventure.


Then it was time to get to work.

Ethan and his crew made five stops throughout the city, picking up garbage and recycling, leaving nothing but clean streets in their wake.

It was an incredible experience for Ethan, but he's not the only one who'll remember the day forever.

"It's a dream come true for me really. I think it's wonderful," truck operator Sam Turman told KCRA. "Humbled. Absolutely humbled."

Ethan's dad heard that one of the crew members even had trouble sleeping the night before — that's how excited he was to be a part of something so special.

Ethan's story is a great reminder that heroes are everywhere.

And though it might seem like certain folks get overlooked, you never know who's paying attention.

Ken said Ethan has been absolutely glowing over the experience for days. Waste Management even gave him a 3-foot-wide Dumpster to add to his toy collection, which Ken enthusiastically explained now resides in the Dean's living room.

And to think, all it took to make a little kid forget about his disease, for a short while at least, was a day hanging out with a couple of garbage collectors.

Finally. Proof that not all heroes wear capes.

From Your Site Articles
Joy

Adorable Golden Retriever absolutely loses it when he runs into his vet at a bar

No one has ever been this excited to see their doctor.

@cosmo_andtheoddparents/TikTok

He wuvs his vet.

Not every dog might jump with joy after seeing their vet out in public. But for Cosmo the Golden Retriever, it was practically Christmas all over again when he spotted his own vet, Dr. Jones, at a brewery.

In an adorable clip posted to TikTok, we see Cosmo in pure, unadulterated bliss as he snuggles with an equally happy Dr. Jones, who, considering he’s still in his scrubs, might have just gotten out of work to grab a quick pint.

Watch:

@cosmo_andtheoddparents When you run into your vet in public #goldenretrieversoftiktok #vetlife #animallovers #petparents #goldenretriever #goldenretrievers #doglife #dogmom #dailyfluff #charlestondogs #doglover #charlestondog #brewerydog ♬ original sound - Cosmo

Ugh, the cuteness is too much to handle! People in the comments could barely contain their secondhand joy.

“He looked over like, “Mom, do you see who this is?” one person wrote, while another said, “What in the Hallmark movie? Adorable!!”

One person even joked, “Did we all check the vet’s hand for a wedding ring? (Said as a married woman. Looking out for you all, or something.)”

According to Hannah Dweikat, Cosmo’s owner, the two actually share quite a history. She tells Upworthy that when Cosmo was but a wee pup, he “gave a scare” after eating a Sago Palm seed, which are highly toxic to dogs, from a plant in their backyard, which of course resulted in him being rushed to the animal hospital and staying there over the weekend.

While that’s every pet owner’s worst nightmare, and certainly a scary situation for the poor fur baby, Dweikat says that “the calm and patient demeanor” of Dr. Jones and his staff put Cosmo at ease. And because of this, “Cosmo has always loved going to see his friends—especially because they give him lots of treats and snuggles.”

Cosmo and Dr. Jones’ buddyship has also blossomed thanks to proximity, as Dweikat only lives down the street from the clinic. “Which means we get to see Dr. Jones and his staff out in public at times and Cosmo takes every chance he can get to say hi,” she explains. This time, however, she was able to capture it all on video. Yay for us!

What makes a good vet?

While not every vet, however gifted, will be able to elicit this type of reaction from their patients, having a calming presence like Dr. Jones is certainly a good sign for pet owners to be on the lookout for when shopping around for their own vet. But that’s not the only quality a good vet needs. According to Saint Matthews University, a vet also needs to have high stamina (both physically and mentally), as well as an ability to tolerate unpleasant situations (you can’t faint at the sight of blood or vomit), a high level of emotional intelligence (maybe all doctors should possess this skill, but especially those who work with animals), adaptability, a sense of enthusiasm, and finally, excellent communication skills.

Dr. Jones seems to have these attributes in spades, and his patients clearly love him for it. None so much as Cosmo, obviously.

By the way, if you’re in need of even more content featuring this precious pup, you can follow Cosmo on both TikTok and Instagram.

From Your Site Articles
dogs
History (Education)

'The Wave' Afterschool Special from 1981 still holds up with its lessons about fascism

The chilling story was based on a real high school experiment.

Image by Elias from Pixabay

"The Wave" demonstrates how easy it is to pull people into fascism.

"What are you watching?" my 13-year-old son asked.

"An old Afterschool Special," I responded.

"What's an 'Afterschool Special'?" he asked.

Hoo boy. Kids these days have no idea how different television was for those of us who grew up in the '80s or how many core memories we have wrapped up in the ABC Afterschool Special.

I briefly explained and then he sat down to watch with me. A discussion about fascism on X (formerly Twitter) had led me to look up "The Wave," a 1981 ABC Afterschool Special based on a real-life high school experiment in Palo Alto, California, in the 1960s.

In the real experiment, first-year history teacher Ron Jones had students at Cubberley High School engage in a simulation of how fascism spreads as part of a lesson on World War II, with him playing the role of the dictator. His intent was to show skeptical students how the Nazis came to power by creating a social movement he dubbed the Third Wave.

"It started out as a fun game with the most popular teacher at school," Mark Hancock, one of the students in Jones' history homeroom class, told Palo Alto Online in 2017. "He told us, 'If you're an active participant, I'll give you an A; if you just go along with it, I'll give you a C; if you try a revolution, I'll give you an F, but if your revolution succeeds, I'll give you an A.'"

Hancock said he started off planning to get that revolution A, but it quickly grew beyond grades and turned into something real. "At the end, I was scared to death," he shared.

It began with Jones rallying the students around the idea of "strength through discipline" and "strength through community." He had them engage in regimented behaviors and handed out membership cards. At first, it was just fun, but students began to enjoy feeling like part of a special community. Jones pushed the importance of following the rules. The students even formed a "secret police" to monitor other students, and if someone broke a Third Wave rule they'd be reported and publicly "tried" by the class.

The students got wrapped up in it to a frightening degree and even Jones found himself enjoying the way the students responded to him. "It was pretty intoxicating," he told Palo Alto Online.

But according to Verde Magazine, Jones felt like he'd lost control of it by the fourth day.

The experiment ended at the end of the week with a rally. Jones told the students they were actually part of a real national Third Wave movement and that the national leader was going to speak to them at the rally. Jones turned on the televisions to white static and watched the students eagerly wait for their leader to speak. That's when he broke the news to them that they'd fallen for a totalitarian regime. Instead of a Third Wave leader speech, he played them a video of a Nazi rally.

According to a school newspaper at the time, most students were disillusioned. But one student said, "It was probably the most interesting unit I've had. It was successful in its goal to achieve the emotions of the Germans under the Nazi regime."

"The Wave" follows the true story quite closely and still holds valuable lessons. One chilling scene shows a kid who had been sort of an outcast prior to the "movement" saying, "For the first time, I feel like I'm a part of something great." He was particularly crushed to find out it was all a fascist facade.

If you can get past the '80s aesthetic, it's worth watching. Even my teen kids got into it, once they stopped making fun of the hair and film quality.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

From Your Site Articles
Popular

Surprising 16-year-long ADHD study reveals opposite of what researchers expected

The findings shed new light on how we might one day understand and manage ADHD.

Unsplash

There's still so much to learn.

Our understanding of ADHD has come a long way in just a few short years. Though it wasn't even formally recognized as a medical condition until the 1960s, by the time the 90s rolled around, diagnoses and stimulant prescriptions were extremely prevalent. Today, diagnoses and treatment are a lot more thoughtful and individualized, and there are more options for treatment and therapy. Even with all these advancements, though, we still have more to learn.

A new long-term study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry has proven to be an excellent next step in getting a better understanding of the disorder.

Researchers studied 483 participants who were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and continued to assess them for a period of 16 years. The study's authors wanted to get a sense of how ADHD symptoms might change over time.

What the researchers found surprised them. In most participants, symptoms of ADHD fluctuated greatly over the years. What surprised them even more were the environmental factors that seemed to play a role in those fluctuations.


a close up of a human brain on a white backgroundUnderstanding our brains is an ongoing process. Photo by BUDDHI Kumar SHRESTHA on Unsplash

Researchers expected that greater life demands—like more responsibility at work, a heavier workload at school, major life changes, etc.—would exacerbate ADHD symptoms. What they found was the opposite.

It makes sense that a person that struggles with inattention or hyperactivity might have more trouble focusing when they have more "going on" and more distractions to pull them in different directions. It was a huge surprise to the researchers that, actually, people's ADHD symptoms seemed to ease up when life got hectic.

“We expected the relationship between environmental demands and ADHD symptoms to be the opposite of what we found,” study author, professor, and clinical psychologist Margaret H. Sibley explained. “We hypothesized that when life demands and responsibilities increased, this might exacerbate people’s ADHD, making it more severe. In fact, it was the opposite. The higher the demands and responsibilities one was experiencing, the milder their ADHD.”

I have a 4-year-old with ADHD and the findings totally track for me.

We find it's actually easier to be in perpetual motion sometimes—out running errands, doing activities, visiting friends and family—versus staying put too long. When we're just relaxing at home, that's when she tends to start bouncing off the walls!

Doing nothing or doing very little is not often a restful state for people with ADHD. Typically, people with ADHD experience more background noise than neurotypical brains—so a quiet, seemingly restful environment can sometimes amplify racing thoughts, negative self-talk, and impulsive behavior versus dampening it. Of course, as always in science, you have to be careful assuming causation from the findings.

a boy doing schoolwork at wooden deskQuiet can make it hard to focus. Annie Spratt/Unsplash

It's important to note that the results of the study don't definitively prove that being busy causes a decrease in ADHD symptoms. “This might mean that people with ADHD perform their best in more demanding environments (perhaps environments that have stronger immediate consequences, like needing to put food on the table for a family or pay rent monthly). It also might mean that people with ADHD take more on their plate when their symptoms are relatively at bay," Sibley says. Either way, the correlation is certainly strong and worthy of more study.

In the meantime, the study's authors think the results could be viewed in a hopeful light for people just learning to manage their ADHD. “If you’re a doctor talking with a patient who is first getting diagnosed with ADHD, it’s a huge help for that person to hear the message that, ‘You’re going to have good years and not-so-good years, but things can go really well for you if you can get the right factors in place,'” Sibley said.

We're learning more and more about what those factors are—what might exacerbate symptoms and what types of things can help—and we're starting to get a clearer picture of how people can manage this challenging disorder.


This article originally appeared last year.

adhd
Family

Mom offers a tour of her 'average middle-class house' and it's just what people needed to see

“Let’s normalize ‘average’ because there is nothing wrong with it."

@steph_murphy/TikTok

Stephanie Murphy shares her "average" home in viral TikTok video.

Sure, it’s lovely to see pristine, perfectly curated homes that look like they belong in Architectural Digest. A little inspo never hurt anyone. But as we all know, the spotless life is simply not an achievable reality, especially for those with busy lives and limited budgets (read: most of us).

But you know what? Maybe even the messy homes deserve some love. The ones with constant junk piles and unfinished projects and dirty dishes and misplaced toys. The homes that will never grace the cover of a magazine but still do a wonderful job of containing all the moments life has to offer—the big, small, extraordinary, mundane, and everywhere in between. 'Cause at the end of the day, isn’t that a home’s true purpose anyway?

Stephanie Murphy, a mom and TikTok creator, seems to think so. Murphy recently took viewers on an “average house tour,” and it was the exact opposite of aspirational.

Highlighted in Murphy’s tour are the pantry door that’s remained unpainted for three years, blinds held together with binder clips, air conditioners held in place by duct tape, a full dish rack tray that’s “a permanent fixture” on their countertops, and not one but two junk drawers (honestly, that’s a little low by my count).

@steph_murphy

Lets normalize “average” because there is nothing wrong with it. Everywhere you look on social media you see big gorgeous houses in perfect condition and its hard not to compare yours to them. But its not the norm and half the time its staged. Our house is lived in, and its filled with love and tons of memories and at the end of the day thats all that matters.

♬ vampire - Olivia Rodrigo

You’ll also notice a fridge that is covered in her kid’s artwork and school pictures. Not in any cohesive way, but merely thrown on randomly, as nature intended.

Meanwhile, in the master bedroom, Murphy and her husband’s bed have two separate blankets because neither of them like to share. A genius idea, and just another example of how we really, really don’t need to continue with marital sleeping norms that don’t actually feel comfortable.

As for why Murphy decided to showcase her “average, middle-class house,” it’s all in the caption of her video:

“Let’s normalize ‘average’ because there is nothing wrong with it. Everywhere you look on social media, you see big gorgeous houses in perfect condition and it’s hard not to compare yours to them. But it’s not the norm and half the time it's staged. Our house is lived in, and it’s filled with love and tons of memories and at the end of the day that's all that matters."

Judging from the comments sections of this now-viral post, it seems like other people are ready for more average content.

“This is awesome!” one person wrote. “I’m constantly feeling inadequate when people have a perfect house that looks like nobody lives there!”

“I feel seen,” added another.

Hear, hear. No need to feel inadequate about having a home that’s lived in. Imperfection has its own kind of beauty.


This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
parenting
Pop Culture

Girl and her extremely rhythmic dog dance to Queen and blow the roof off of 'AGT'

Folks are calling this the best dog act they've ever seen.

America's Got talent/Youtube

“How do we know that the dog is a real dog?” asked Simon Cowell.

What dog owner wouldn’t want to jam out to Queen with their pup while the world watches? Of course, our version probably wouldn’t be nearly as impressive as what Roni Sagi and her black and white border collie, aptly named Rhythm, did for America's Got Talent in August 2024.

First off, audiences knew they’d instantly be in for a treat when Sagi and Rhythm recreated the band’s famous pose for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But it only got better from there in a routine that featured a mash-up of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

The dance duo wowed judges and audiences alike with synchronized steps, turns, flips, and even a cool bridge pose trick (seriously, this was a dog owner’s dream come to life). Simon Cowell jokingly asked “How do we know that the dog is a real dog?” because Rhythm was just that good.

Sagi would later end up sharing that Rhythm earned his name from an early age, already tapping his little feet on her bed at only 6 weeks old. By that point, Sagi had already had experience training therapy dogs, which undoubtedly gave her a good foundation for working with her little “tornado storm.”

Perhaps it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise that Rhythm is so gifted. After all, border collies are notorious for being able to pick up skills quickly, and there have been several border collies that have broken world records—including records for intelligence, balance, and skateboarding (yes, really).

But Sagi seems to credit their chemistry less on Rhythm’s species traits, and more on his individual personality. “It’s so much fun to have a partner that wants [to perform] as much as you,” she said. “He wants to do it all, and he wants to do it now, and he wants to do it as good as he can.”

Down in the comments, online viewers shared their praises—and awe—for Rhythm’s performance.

“This was the most amazing dog act I've seen!” one person wrote.

“That precious dog Rhythm is SO talented and smart!!! I don’t understand how he knows what to do when his back is to her?!! This dog is truly dancing and just extremely talented!!!” added another.

Another said, “This dog is the most energetic and enthusiastic I've ever seen.”

Of course, Rhythm wasn't getting all the love. One person wrote, “I don't usually like dog acts, but this was impressive. Roni is very creative with what she does and obviously a great dancer herself and trainer.”

Maybe we can’t get all dogs to perform quite on this level, but it does show us just how amazing man’s best friend really is.

Watch the full act below:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


This story originally appeared last year.

From Your Site Articles
dogs
Trending Stories