Note: This is an excerpt from Sonny’s upcoming book – What’s the Best That Can Happen? A Motivational Memoir

When I was about 10, I attended a Cub Scout meeting at a classmate’s house and couldn’t believe he had his own room.

It was filled with toys and shelves lined with inviting books. Hanging from the ceiling were two model Navy jets, suspended by nearly invisible wire, frozen in formation as if in mid-flight.

When we went into the backyard, I stopped short.

There was a sandbox.

The kind you saw at the park.

In his backyard.

I went home determined that my little brother, Ricky and I would have one too.

Our backyard was actually the parking lot behind the barbershop in the strip center, where we lived. Most of it was dirt, especially in the back corner near the fence.

Using a few leftover two-by-fours from a recent construction job, I nailed together a large square to serve as a frame.

Behind one of the shops in the center, I found an window screen lying in a pile of discarded junk. I carried it back and placed it over the wooden frame.

Ricky and I scooped dirt with our hands and piled it onto the screen, shaking it back and forth so the finer soil fell through.

After about an hour, we stepped back and looked at what we had made.
Forget that it was refined dirt.

I told Ricky to scoop some up with his three-year-old hands.

“That’s what sand feels like,” I said.

He smiled and let it run through his fingers.

Later, I used scraps of wood to make small boats, by layering pieces together.

The sandbox became their ocean.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was ours.

Standing there with Ricky, watching him float his wooden ships across a sea we had made from almost nothing, I understood something before I had words for it.

We didn’t need what other kids had to feel rich.

We just needed imagination, a little effort, and someone to share it with.

That sandbox wasn’t just a place to play. It was proof that joy could be built by hand, that limits didn’t have the final say, and that even in a parking lot behind a barbershop, a small world could open up wide enough for dreams.