So, last night I had what I can honestly say was one of the peak experiences of my life. Id finished having dinner out with my family, celebrating my brothers 64th birthday, and wed all just gotten up to leave the restaurant when a fairly large young man at the next table got up as well. Excuse me, he said, but are you Mr. Copeland?. Yes I replied, to which he continued, Well, Im ______ ______ and you taught me to read by letting me read Calvin and Hobbes books in your class. Its because of you that I can read. Wow! I immediately recognized and remembered him very well, though he was now of course quite a bit taller than hed been the last time Id seen him some eleven years before. Hed been in a 4th/5th grade special ed. class of mine and over the years since then Id often related to others how before I first started reading Calvin and Hobbes to the class (a very funny, often somewhat philosophical cartoon strip featuring Calvin, a precocious six year old and Hobbes, his toy stuffed animal tiger who, for Calvin, anyway, was very real indeed) there was one student who I suspected would especially be able to relate to the strip. And sure enough, during our first reading of it, one boy - the younger version of the young man standing before me now- had enthusiastically said, Hey, he reminds me of me! And after that, although the text was written at a rather high reading level, hed begun devouring my collection of Calvin and Hobbes books, during both free choice reading time as well as borrowing them from the classroom after school. His mother was also there - whom I remembered as well - and she told me that in middle school hed become quite a voracious reader of a wide variety of materials. I then learned that he is now 20 years old and is a sophomore at UNM studying business - and that they both felt that that was all because of me. Well whether or not thats entirely true I cant say, but hearing it certainly made my day! But the fact is that we seldom know, at least not in this life anyway, exactly how our actions may ripple out to affect the lives of others, both positively and negatively. But they do, and may we all be aware of this as we go throughout our daily lives, remembering that sometimes what we see as being a rather small action may, in fact, end up having a huge impact on the life of another. Blessing to you all, Robert.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 03:23:10 +0000
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