At Children’s Hospital, a Note with Lunch
Patients at Children’s Hospital of Alabama now get a little extra pick-me-up. Every day, kids there receive a note with their lunches. These notes are called napkinisms. The project sprung from a local writer, who spent years writing lunchbox notes for his own children.
Just about every morning, Billy Ivey hand-writes a note for each one of his five kids. Using a Sharpie, he scribbles down a witty joke or a simple “I love you” on a paper towel. Then he adds it to their school lunch. Ivey’s been doing that for over a decade.
“Couple years ago,” Ivey says. “I wrote a note that I thought was particularly funny and I took a picture of it.”
Billy Ivey
For over a decade, Billy Ivey has been hand-writing notes for his kids’ lunches.
Ivey posted the picture to social media.
“It said, ‘Remember, every time you smile, a mean kid gets diarrhea.’ And people, again, people couldn’t believe that I would write something like that to my kid, but the purpose of it was to make my kids laugh, to surprise them with something in the middle of their day.”
That idea resonated with people. Ivey started calling the notes “napkinisms.” He created a website and has a dedicated following on social media. Starting this year, kids at Children’s Hospital of Alabama are getting their own napkinisms. Every day, patients receive one of Ivey’s notes, printed onto postcards and passed out at lunchtime.
Six-year-old patient Blaklee Tew enjoys it. He picks up one of the napkinisms and reads it aloud.
“Potato chips are vegetables,” Tew reads. “Just go with it.”
Tew laughs, because he says potato chips do not count as vegetables.
Garland Stansell, head of communications for Children’s Hospital, helped launch the napkinisms partnership. He says the idea is simple.
“That somebody wrote a personal message, somebody’s thinking about you,” Stansell says. “Somebody cares that you’re here.”
And it never hurts to make a patient smile. Stansell says napkinisms is set to continue indefinitely, with plans to give staff the opportunity to write their own notes for the kids.
Outside of the hospital, anyone can join in and submit an idea on the napkinisms website. Billy Ivey says just a few words can go a long way.
“That’s where the power of this comes, you know,” Ivey says. “It’s not my responsibility to change the world or change somebody’s life, but I do have an opportunity to change somebody’s day, on a daily basis.”
Ivey says since starting the program at Children’s Hospital, there’s been an increase in public submissions on the napkinisms website. He says some of those notes may eventually wind up on patient lunch trays.
‘My role was making movies that mattered,’ says Jodie Foster, as ‘Taxi Driver’ turns 50
Foster was just 12 years old when she starred in the 1976 film. "What luck to have been part of that, our golden age of cinema in the '70s," she says. Her latest film is Vie Privée (A Private Life).
Supreme Court appears likely to uphold state bans on transgender athletes
To date, 27 states have enacted laws barring transgender participation in sports.
Keep an eye out for these new books from big names in January
The new year begins with a host of promising titles from George Saunders, Julian Barnes, Jennette McCurdy, Karl Ove Knausgaard and more. Here's a look ahead at what's publishing this month.
Want to play a Tiny Desk concert? The 2026 Contest is now open for entries
The 2026 Tiny Desk Contest, our annual search for the next great undiscovered artist, is now officially open for entries.
Scott Adams, the controversial cartoonist behind ‘Dilbert,’ dies at 68
Adams announced in May that he was dying of metastatic prostate cancer. Thousands of newspapers carried his strip satirizing office culture from the '90s until a controversy in 2023.
As Iran’s protests continue, Israelis and Palestinians watch closely
There is broad support for the protests among Israeli officials, but Palestinians say they hope the Iranian regime stays in place and the protests die down soon.
