Everyone Has a Story

Recent Memorial Service

 I have been contemplating this subject over the past week after I attended a funeral for a friend's husband, whom I didn't know very well. However, by the end of the service, I was deeply touched by the narratives from his close friends, his children, and his colleagues. It made me think: everyone has a story.

 As I looked over the people seated in the church, I wondered what stories they carried. Which ones were funny? Which ones were turning points in their lives?

 And over the years of teaching elementary students, I heard many stories from parents and students alike. One that came to mind was especially uplifting.

 Mom on Television

 I had a set of parents who had daughters. I taught all of them in my classroom, and the youngest one was in my class. They were bright, energetic, and fun to be around. During one semester's conferences, only their mother came in to discuss their child's performance. The mom informed me that she was in the midst of a divorce and asked me to keep her informed if her daughter's studies and grades went down, which I promised to do.

 Over the remainder of the year, it had been a rocky road for the youngest daughter, but she forged ahead and remained academically strong. One particular day, she bounced in to inform me her mom was going to be on television that morning. Being intrigued, she said her mom was picking her up after school and would tell me all about it.

 Anxiously, all day I wondered why her mom had been on television. What story would I have a chance to hear after school?

 At the end of school, the student waited in the classroom for her mom. She noticed her mom driving in and pointed out the window to wave. Soon, she walked in, and I asked her to take a seat. What she told me was exciting.

 The mother had a sister who was an attorney and had drafted patent papers for an energy drink she had perfected in her kitchen. The patent went through, and a major company I won't name here picked up her energy drink. Because the large company had invested in her product, they asked her to go on television to promote the upcoming energy drink.

 Then the best part of the story came – she had earned enough money from the company to buy a new home for her girls and didn't have anything to stand in the way of her success.

 Bears in the Backyard

 On a beautiful spring day, I heard the buses outside the window, and all the students shed their jackets as they entered school. The bell rang, and one of my students had a pack of pictures in her hand.

 After the pledge of allegiance, she walked up to my desk with her handful of pictures, and I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked at the picture, and there she stood holding a baby bear cub.

 I immediately gathered the class to the meeting area and pulled up a chair for her to sit in. She turned the picture around to give everyone a glimpse of her holding the baby bear cub and then told the whole class about it.

 The family awoke early that morning to a ruckus in the backyard. There were three baby bear cubs running around their fenced-in backyard. Her father immediately called the police and animal control because they hadn't yet seen the mother bear.

 By the time the police reached their home, the mother bear was also in the backyard searching for a way to get them all out. All the adults were panicking.

 Animal control soon came, tranquilized the mother, who was estimated to be about three hundred pounds, and animal control had decided to relocate the mother and the cubs at least fifty miles away.

 After the commotion settled down, animal control realized the mother bear had made a den under their deck and, of course, hibernated during the winter, only to give birth to three baby cubs in the spring.

 No one in the family even knew the bears were there. And, living in New Jersey for an extended period of time, I, too, have seen many bears. Sometimes you see them on highways, in parking lots, and in fields. It's not unusual to see them in the countryside. We even had a bear in the parking lot at the end of a school day – and yes, students panicked, and again, the police came to remove the bear.

 Another great story, and I'm sure that young student will never forget what happened that morning and has the pictures to prove it!

 What Stories Do You Have

 As we look back at our lives, we all have stories. Do we write them down? Mostly no, but we should. Everyone has good and bad stories; that's life. But all of us are important because we do have stories to tell. People are interesting, and maybe if we all listened more, paid attention to the stories each of us is willing to share, we'd be more in tune, less critical, and more heartfelt with each other.

I love to listen to stories, probably because of all the students I had in my classroom — all unique, all from different backgrounds, all wanting to be heard. We should all be allowed to tell at least one story in our lifetime.

 I learned this the hard way myself. Years ago, during one of the toughest years of my teaching career, I started typing out what happened each day — just for me, and to get it off my chest. I never thought those notes would turn into anything. But I still have them, and someday, they might become a book of their own.

 That's the thing about stories. You don't always know which ones matter until much later. Write them down anyway.

 So, the next time you have a chance to listen to a story from a colleague, friend, parent, or a child, sit and listen. It may be a story that could turn into a novel at some point.

 Keep writing.

 Dianne

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