Friday, December 28, 2012

A Clam...Just One

Tonight I want to introduce you to a boy named Zach Sobiech.

Zach is 17. And he's a talented songwriter and musician and also an adorable ginger. If all things were equal, he'd have a great future in music! But...

Don't settle in with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of icy cold root beer and get too comfortable or complacent thinking you've got awhile to get to know him over the course of his illustrious, star-bound, career so you can skip this post on this Friday night and come back to it later. Because Zach is dying. 

No really.

He's dying from osteosarcoma.


I was introduced to Zach by way of an upworthy.com post on Facebook a few days before Christmas. And you are darn tootin' to think that I donated to the Children's Cancer Research Fund in addition to purchasing his song on iTunes after I watched the video just once.

Damnit, Upworthy! You're supposed to make me feel up up up!

Instead, after watching the video just once, I was reminded how fragile life is...how often it's stolen from young people who haven't gotten the real chance to know and understand how much fun life is after you move out of the teen angsty, John Hughes' riddled years and into your own apartment where banana splits for dinner can be had, where an appreciation for naps can be had, where love and sex and cocktails and heartbreak and failure and success success success and LIFE HAPPENS.

Zach's getting robbed of way too much.

So I'm posting this tonight. Because all y'all - or, well, nearly all y'all - have a buck 7 to spend on downloading Zach's song from iTunes...depending on taxes in your state/country/universe. It cost me, in Colorado, $1.07 to download the song.

I DO NOT CARE if you hate the song. I do not care if you never listen to it. I do not care if you do not care about a 17-year-old boy who had the heart to put his feelings about dying into a song, record it, and then put it out there for people to buy it.

Just buy it, alright?

If you don't have a damn dollar to spend on a song instead of a latte, then I'll give you that dollar...and then you and I are going to have a little talk about priorities, you hear?

Because this is important. Zach's life is important. 

Your latte is not.

kthxbye

2 comments:

Brenda Stevens said...

thank you Jane. A teary reminder how fragile life is

Masked Mom said...

Listen, I bought the song, even though it cost me $24.65 because I owed iTunes money from the time one of my daughter's ex-boyfriends accidentally purchased stuff on my account rather than his own.

Seriously, thanks for sharing. Upworthy is amazing. Cancer sucks. My goal today was to point out the obvious--my work here is done.