Miracles might come in all shapes and sizes, but I’m still not convinced they are small and furry like Lady Gaga

It’s funny what people consider to be a miracle. After Dad had his “little accident,” Grams said, “Joe, it’s a small miracle you didn’t kill yourself.” It wasn’t a small miracle, though, it was Eileen from the hairdresser’s and nothing about Eileen is small or miraculous. If she hadn’t been walking her dog, Lady Gaga, at that exact moment, she wouldn’t have seen Dad’s mail truck roll down the hill and shouted at him to move out of the way. So, as I said—not a miracle, just good timing. Well good-ish timing—he still broke his leg.

Our teacher, Mrs. Walker, once said that if she finished the school year without strangling one of us it would be a miracle. At the end of sixth year, all my class were still alive . . . at least I think they were still alive. Dylan Katano disappeared midway through the fall term, but I heard he went back to Japan. Anyway, my point is that Mrs. Walker was wrong. Not strangling one of 6W is not a miracle—even if we were a handful.

In the olden days miracles used to be bigger. Although there’s no knowing if those miracles actually happened. Once Charlie, Ben, and I tried to share a bag of fish and chips from Marley’s. It stretched the very limits of our friendship—and Marley’s is known for their big portions. How some guy called Jesus managed to share three haddock and some white bread with 5,000 people, I do not know. I guess people wanted to believe it had happened.

Dad says people like a good story, and if it makes them happy then why let the truth get in the way? I suppose that’s what happened in Wales this summer. People saw what they wanted to see. And they wanted to see miracles.

If you’d have asked me at the beginning of July what I thought about that, I’d have told you that the truth is important. That facts are important. Back then, facts were just about my favorite thing. Some people collect Pokémon cards, some people collect stickers, I collected facts. See, once you know a fact, it’s yours to keep forever. It can’t leave you and no one can take it away. But then, this summer I saw something truly miraculous that made me question everything.