many, many years ago, when I went to Dunedin Junior High School. On my very first day there, we had just moved to the town of Dunedin. I met a man who was the principal, and his name was Milton Galbraith, and he said, we're having an assembly, you need to come to the assembly, and we're going to explain everything that you need to know about Dunedin Junior High School. That was exciting.
I also met my first friend at the junior high school, a guy by the name of John Tanuto. I also reinvented myself at Dunedin Junior High School. You see, I'm going to tell you this, legally, my name is Mitchell. But when I met John Tanuto at Dunedin Junior High School, he said, Hi, I'm John Tanuto.
What's your name? I said, my name is Michael. He goes, what? My name is Michael Gross.
He goes, oh, how you doing, Michael? And the next thing you know, when I would go into a teacher's class, I became Michael Gross. Michael Gross, all the way through all, and by the way, this was the first time I'd ever switched classes because I'd come from elementary school, and from elementary school, you had one classroom, and then you went to junior high school and you switched classes, you know, like the big kids did. So every time I went to a class, I became Michael.
That was that, but on that first day, we had that assembly. And on that assembly, I'm sitting out next to John Tanuto in the gym, and chairs out, and up on the stage was Mr. Galbreath, and he said, I'm going to teach you something now that you can take with you for the rest of your life. And if you follow this instruction, it's one simple instruction.
Your life will be grand. By the way, if you goof up and don't follow this instruction, your life might not be so happy. Man was he right. And there was a kid that came out, his name was Jeff, I remember that, forget his last name, but he came out carrying a big sign.
The sign said the following thing, it said, always do what you know is right. Always do what you know is right. And Mr. Galbreath came out and said, simple instructions, aren't they?
Never do what you think is right. Always do what you know is right. If you do what you know is right, you'll never go wrong. If you do what you think is right, you're going to mess up all the time.
You know that simple instruction is just so real. And I'm going to tell you something else. I've gone through my life, and when I followed that instruction, things have gone real well. I haven't followed that instruction.
When I did what I thought was right, man, you know, things happen that were a bit of a challenge and we all have those things happen in our life. That is a bit of a challenge. Mr. Galbreath taught me, always do what you know is right.
Now that worked for me that very day, that very, very day, I went into an English class and Mrs. Glenn was my English teacher. She handed out these handouts. By the way, I still have to this day.
I have these handouts that talked about grammar and punctuation. It was like a little shortcut handouts. They were a memory of grammar. They all smelled weird.
But she handed those out. And she said, take these home and read them thoroughly tonight. And if you do that, when you come back tomorrow, we're going to have a quiz and we're going to have some exercises. So when I took that home, I did what I knew was right.
I read the whole thing. It wasn't that long. It was like five pages. And I read it.
And then in the morning, when I got up, I read it again before breakfast. And then I went to school because I knew that was right. And I saw it through her class. I did wonderful things in her class.
But to that, to this day, I'm a reasonably good writer. As a matter of fact, I get a lot of compliments on my writing. And I've published very little. I've published some stuff.
But most of my writing is all personal stuff. And I get compliments on it. And I give all that credit to Mr. Galbreath who told me to always do what you know is right.
And I knew it was right to follow Mrs. Glenn's instructions. I could bore you. Or you might not be bored.
With all the times I did what I thought was right. And boy, did I mess up. Oh, man, don't we all. Don't we all.
And to this day, I continue to mess up because I'll do what I think is right. Not what I know is right. Okay? I constantly reinforce that to myself.
So today I, Michael Gross, the host of The Daily Grateful, I'm right here to tell you that I'm going to do what I know is right. And I'm going to work hard to publish an edition of The Daily Grateful every single day, well, five days a week. And there's short episodes like this. This is going to be, you know, six or seven minutes.
But that's what I want to do for you. So thank you, Mr. Galbreath. And we're going to always do what we know is right.
And that should work for us very, very well.