The words not spoken

 

In a reflective moment, it’s not hard to remember things we’ve done wrong.  Those will stand out without any effort on our part.  But what of things we could have done right but didn’t?  There is a particular missed moment that comes to my mind.  It goes back to high school.  High school was not a good time for me.  All I wanted out of high school, was out.  If a subject interested me, I could get good grades.  If it wasn’t interesting to me, I got Cs and Ds.  I got a lot of Cs and Ds.

 

Tropical fish, hydroponics, mountain gorillas; those are things that interested me.  The American history class with Mr. O’Byrne, that’s a class that didn’t.  I sat off to the side, toward the back while he talked.  I discovered that the cabinet next to me held a treasure trove of National Geographic magazines.  So while Mr. O’Byrne talked I wasn’t disruptive.  I sat quietly and read about things other than American History.

 

It was an uneventful semester in his class until one day he suddenly said something nice about me.  He didn’t only say it *to* me, he said it to the entire class.  I don’t know why he decided to say something nice about me, I wasn’t paying any attention at the time.  Of course I don’t know what point he was making about American history, but all of a sudden I heard “Take Mr. Taylor there in the back of the room.  He’s not a good student.  In fact he’s a terrible student.”  (He was working his way up to the nice thing, but I didn’t know that at the time.  At the time I just thought I was being busted in front of the entire class.)  “But I have faith in him.  I think he’s going to do well.”

 

I still don’t know what point he was making and how I figured into it because I missed the entire context.  He could so easily have embarrassed me for not paying attention (well, actually he did embarrass me by calling attention to me), but he put a positive spin on it.  What had I done that he would have faith in me?  I never found out, but that one little positive moment at a time when I was lost in the wilderness of high school; I always appreciated that.

 

Of course I didn’t say anything to him then (or I wouldn’t be writing this now), but I thought about it after.  From time to time, when I got older, I thought about stopping by to say something nice to him while he might still remember me, but I never got to it.  Now, so much time has passed, the opportunity has passed, and I never said the words “Thank you Mr. O’Byrne.  I think that moment made a difference in my life.”