The fourth-grader Grant was born with a large port wine birthmark with very noticeable reddish tint surrounding the area between his left cheek and eye.
At first, Grant didn’t seem to mind his birthmark, his mother Madeleine Schmidt said. However, the little boy started to get frustrated about all the reactions he received from other kids and on the street. He was always asked the same questions over and over again, asking him how he got the stain on his face and if they could touch it.
He always replied with “It’s just a birthmark”, but couldn’t handle the tough reactions anymore. Some people said things such as “Oh, I thought you got punched in the face.” Even though they didn’t mean to be hurtful, Grant broke down because of the harsh words.
One day, Grant said something to his mother that instantly broke her heart.
“I wish I didn’t have my birthmark.”
“It had never been a thing to him, so we naturally started asking questions,” Madeleine says. “We asked if he just didn’t like it anymore and he said ‘No, it’s fine. I’m just so tired of people asking about it or trying to touch my face.’ It broke my heart.”
He said this after hearing dozens of reactions, but it was one more reaction that would bring a smile to his face once again.
One of Grant’s schoolmates asked him the question he was asked hundreds of times. Grant expected to hear one of the standard responses but was absolutely stunned when the schoolmate simply said: “Well, your birthmark is really cool.”
This one reaction by an incredible kind boy immediately restored some self-confidence for Grant.
“When he told me, I knew I had to find this kid,” his mom said. “Grant said ‘I had the best day!’ I hadn’t seen that kind of joy in him for a while.”
Madeleine wanted to make sure that the child knew how much his reaction meant to Grant and wanted to find him. She had already heard that the child had red hair and figured that he would be around the same age as Grant. With over four hundred children in the same school, finding the kind boy wasn’t an easy task, but she managed to track him down.
It was Tucker who had talked with Grant, and funnily enough, it turns out he didn’t have red hair after all. Tucker is quite a shy person, as opposed to Grant who is rather energetic.
The two buddies met again so that they could catch up and Madeleine took a picture of them with their arms around each other, which quickly reached thousands of readers on social media.
“I was excited to see that it resonated with so many people,” she says. “What it did for my son is amazing.”
This one encounter with Grant’s new friend absolutely changed his life. He devoted his science fair project to birthmarks and thanks to his newfound confidence and the science project, his classmates started to treat him differently, saying his science project was cool and with some even being genuinely interested in it.
Grant’s mother Madeleine recalls a visit to the dermatologist after Grant and Tucker met, and asked him if he would magically remove his birthmark if it were possible.
His response is terrific.
“Are you kidding? No way! I love my birthmark.”
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