It's Story Time!

So, hey!

As my title would suggest, it's story time gang! So, sit back and relax and let me tell you all a WONDERFUL story!

Once upon a time there was a young man who was living a very good life in a small town. He was married to the most beautiful woman in the world, and was getting ready to become a father for the first time, and he could not have been more excited. He was so happy about his wife being pregnant, and his wife was happy, and everyone was happy.

This young man was also very happy in his chosen profession. He was a teacher. He was working in the same school that he had started working in, and was very happy. Except, well, he was having doubts. He wasn't sure that he was doing as well as he could have been doing. He was reflecting back on this time as a teacher, (almost five years he had been teaching) because he was getting ready to move to a new city.

Everyone told him what a great teacher he was, but he had some secret doubts. He knew that he cared, but caring and a quarter will get you a cup of piss-poor coffee at a truck stop on I-35. He had been sure that he would get at least a few job offers in his new big city, and that the transistion would go very smoothly.

But, it hadn't gone smoothly.

He had gotten a screening interview in the Big Fancy School District and then hadn't heard a thing for 3 months. (And, that felt like an eternity!!)

He was starting to suspect that maybe he had put all of his eggs in one basket, and then grace-lessly dropped that egg-filled basket off a very high buildling.

Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-plop!!!!

And, with these new dark doubts plaguing our young man's mind, he started thinking back on all of the students that he'd had over the years....

and of one student in particular.

Our teacher had started his teaching career with a very special class of students. They were all wonderful and unique creatures, blessings from God, to be sure, but our teacher saw them more like a plague of hissing cats. They were always egging each other on, acting out, pushing, bickering, and in general not acting like our teacher thought his first class would act. And, in this class, there was one young man. This young man had come from an exceptionally trying background, with a lurid family life, a horrifying school experience, and failures and stumbling blocks far too numerous to recount in this short story.

Our teacher knew of this young man's challenges, and he also knew of his pattern of acting out in the classroom. Our teacher wanted to be different for this student. Our teacher wanted to make a difference in this young man's life. Our teacher wanted to be that teacher who would help this student see that things could be different; that he could succeed. Throughout the course of the school year, there were any number of conflicts between student and teacher. The student even told the teacher that he was an asshole. He said that the teacher should get a different job, that he shouldn't be a teacher at all. The teacher refused to give up on, or let up on this student, and the student, as students are wont to do, refused to give up, too. This continued on all year long, teacher pushing the student, student pushing back at the teacher, and so on. The teacher continued to try to make a difference and, probably tried to write something meaningful in the students yearbook at the end of the year, hoping--most likely in vain--that it would have some kinf of a sustaining impact on the young boy.

And, in time, those struggles, those attempts at reaching the young student, got lost in a sea of attempts and struggles for our teacher.

And then, one day, long after that young boy had been removed from the school district, long after he had been committed to the juvenile detention system of that particular state, about the time our young teacher was worrying about whether or not he would get a job in his new home, he received three very significant phone calls.

The first phone call was from a school in his new district asking him if he would like to come in for an interview. The second call came an hour and a half after that interview, from the principal asking him to come back for a second interview.

And the third phone call?

That call came when our teacher was finishing up packing up his house, getting ready to move to his new city.

The caller?

The young student from that first class.

He had been looking through his things, and had happened upon his old fifth grade year book, and he had seen that his teacher had written in it, "I wish you nothing but success in the future, and I know you can achieve it."

He was calling because he had gotten his G.E.D. (early!!) and was applying to go to radiology school in the fall. Oh, and he also wanted to apolgize for all the stuff he had done in the teacher's class.

Our teacher chuckled, dumbstruck, and told his long lost student that it was quite all right, and that he was just very glad to hear from him.

They chatted for a while and said their goodbyes. And, as is often the case, the student would never realize the impact he would have on this one teacher.

And that, my faithful readers, is story time for today.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tommy