Things happen for a reason. It was fate. It was just a coincidence. How many times have you heard these statements to describe events? I have been writing this column for over two years. My columns have dealt with everything from village board decisions, local people, events and everything in between. My column from last week, Remembering Ray, resulted in many phone calls, comments from people I know and don't know. My column told of Ray Fettig's passing and the request of his daughter to "do one selfless act of kindness" each day. I also seized the opportunity to use this moment to remind everyone that our local sports and community groups need your support. As the schedule or fate will have it, I had to register my son for the upcoming Farmingdale baseball season. When I walked into the room I could not help but notice the amount of volunteers there. In all the years I have been registering my children for sports and other activities, I never really paid attention to "behind the scenes." I never really stopped to think how many people are needed to run a baseball program for over 1,000 children. Now, keenly aware of it, I walked from table to table to say hello to the many people I knew there. It was a real pleasure for me to speak to some of my neighbors, friends and residents of the community. I thought to myself how fortunate I am to live in this community. When you take time to really look at what we have, it puts everything into perspective. During the 45 minutes I was there, I had some people come up to me to thank me for writing about Ray and I had others come up to me and tell me that they did not know Ray but loved the column and its message. What also amazed me was that each conversation I had lead to discussions on other topics. The topics involved other community groups, community volunteers and other grass-roots issues. Once again, I found myself amazed at what goes on in this community to support our children and residents of all of Farmingdale. One of the groups that were part of my discussion was the Farmingdale Community Summit. They once again will be presenting Farmingdale Jumps on Jan. 31. This is a basketball game that pits the Farmingdale teachers and school district staff members against the Harlem Magicmasters. All the proceeds from the event go the Summits Family Assistance Fund that is used to help local families in need. With my recent conversations fresh in my mind I thought what a great opportunity for the community to "do a good deed" just by attending the game. It also brought all the pieces of the past week nicely together, reminding me that whatever fate, coincidence, or just plain luck brings us, we always need to put things in perspective and just plain try to be nice to each other. It really is contagious and does make a profound difference.