"You Were My Favorite Teacher"

After a lot of years of teaching at different grade levels, I moved to a town about 25 miles from where I had done most of my teaching. Over the years, I occasionally ran into a former student and was amazed to find that they still remembered me. Sometimes they had to clue me in as to who they were since they had grown up in the meantime and changed a bit more in looks than I had.

Anyway, not long ago, I ordered a sandwich at the speaker of an Arby's Roast Beef restaurant, and when I drove up to the window, a young woman I didn't recognize came dashing over to the window. "You're Mrs. Gibson," she cried. "You were my very favorite teacher." A bit embarrassed, I asked her name. As soon as she told me, I did remember the little girl with pigtails that had been so appealing to me 20 years earlier.

I redeemed myself a little by telling her exactly where she had sat in my class and by mentioning the pigtails, and since no one was behind me, we were able to chat a while, and she repeated that she had remembered me because I was her very favorite teacher.

I'm sure my head must have started to swell as I imagined that it must have been because I had taught her how to write clearly, or had helped her plan that science project that had won a prize, or maybe it was because I finally got the idea of how fractions worked across to her in math.

I didn't have to imagine for long, because then she said; "You want to know why you were my favorite teacher? It was because you took us skating on the last day of school and bought us each a Coke afterwards."

I guess it's a good thing they don't let students pick out who is going to be the "teacher of the year."