Photo via Steelers.com
In the first episode, young JuJu postponed his driving test so he could perfect his parallel parking skills, and he recovered his beloved bicycle, which had been stolen by some miscreant. Let’s see what he’s up to this week:
After his stolen bicycle was found, things really started looking up for JuJu. He got a lot of “snaps” in the football game in Detroit, and was the star of the game! (“Snaps” are when you get to be one of the 11 men on the field for your team in a football game. The coaches choose very carefully which of the players get to go onto the field, and JuJu was very excited that they kept choosing him!)
Then Coach Tomlin took him and all his teammates to Dave and Busters so they could play other kinds of games. JuJu wore an extravagent costume. It was so fun! After that he got to go home to visit his many brothers and sisters, and he had plenty of time to secure tasty breakfast food. But as great as this was, something better happened—he was named the AFC Offensive Player of the Week! This is a big honor, especially for someone as young as JuJu!
As you may remember, JuJu is a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the people who decide such things thought that he was the very best for that week in hitting people (legally) and catching balls from his quarterback and running away from the guys on the other team who wanted to take him down. JuJu isn’t the very fastest player in the NFL—far from it—he’s not even one of the fastest players on his own team. But he was fast enough when he needed to be!
This is a good lesson for all of us. You don’t have to be the very best at everything all the time, just when it counts.
This made JuJu’s time with his family all the more fun! He let his sisters paint his toenails and had water balloon fights with his brothers, as a nice man called Stephen Nesbit wrote about in the newspaper. JuJu’s life must be pretty exciting if people want to write about it in the newspaper!
But that wasn’t all the excitement for the past week. No, indeed! JuJu decided that he was good enough at parallel parking and took his driver’s test on Tuesday. He was perfect! He now has a driver’s license! But somebody is sad about this:
It’s okay to be sad when the relationship with one of our best friends changes. But we have to be excited for our friend, and know that they still care about us. And we can be sure that JuJu still loves his bicycle, because he isn’t the sort to forget his old friends when he makes new ones. We should all be like that. The more friends the better, even if some of them are inanimate objects.
And speaking of friends, one of JuJu’s friends received an award as well, a very important one. His friend Artie was given the Ed Block Courage Award, which is an award given to the player on the team who has done the most for those around him.
This is a very special award. Artie is taking care of his family because his mother died, and so when he is done practicing with his friends on the team he picks up his brothers from school and watches their games and helps them with their homework.
JuJu is very proud of his friend. This is a very good thing Artie is doing. Isn’t it fun when we can be excited and proud for our friends? JuJu also got to go to the special luncheon and cheer for him and wave a Terrible Towel!
Sometimes people aren’t able to be excited for their friends. They might even get jealous. This is not good. We should all be excited for our friends when they do well. And as you can see, sometimes you get a nice lunch out of it!
It’s been a great week for JuJu. He’s back with his friends at practice, getting ready for a trip to Indianapolis! He is working very hard to be as perfect at Lucas Oil Stadium as he was at his driver’s test. He wants Mr. Roethlisberger to know for sure that he will catch anything he throws to him. And who knows—maybe he will score another touchdown!
To be continued…