I could not believe my eyes when I saw the email in my Inbox. I clicked on it and started to cry. It was her!! She wrote me back!! Suddenly, the years have seemed to melt away and I can still remember her strawberry-blonde hair, her glasses, her voice. Wow! Talk about a time warp! But I am glad that I was able to contact her and let her know how she helped me through the most difficult time of my life.
I guess the real reason I chose to seek her out now is that my son is graduating from high school in June and seeing him go through all of the things as a senior compare in contrast to what I was going through at his age, and THANK GOD!! He doesn't have any of that to deal with!!
I have received a few emails since she first replied back and I have replied to her. It still feels funny to call her by her first name, it seems disrespectful to me, even though I am no longer a student! Does that make any sense at all? Anyway, she stopped over for a visit to the Polebarn here and said I "write well." Again, with the crying. She was a tough teacher. I was a writer with an "attitude." I had been told by all of my former English teachers that I was an excellent writer and I would do great and wonderful things, and blah, blah, blah. I have to confess, I used that to get some special favors for grades and other things, and they let me slide by with a lot of stuff! Not Mrs. Fliginger. She basically looked me in the eye and said, "You think you're a writer? Prove it!" I had to work my tail off and she didn't let me slide with anything. My point? I got knocked off my pedestal, and I became a better person, AND a better writer!
Sometimes the greatest lessons come from the toughest teachers!
1 comment:
Doesn't it give you a great feeling though when you encounter one of your former teachers and they actually remember you and often for good things, not the bad stuff, you did in their class too? There aren't very many of my former teachers left now, but my old high school typing teacher is still around and she has become a very good friend to me over the years since I finished high school - 45 years this May! Incredible that any of my teachers are still living I suppose.
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