There are some people in the story of your life that you hope remember you as fondly as you remember them. There are some people who had a great impact on you at an important time in your life, and you wonder if you made an equal impression on them. I’d wondered that about someone from my college days for years, and yesterday I had it confirmed when we unexpectedly reunited.
It started with my mouth full of food, my hands full of beer, and my head in a refrigerator.
Close friends of mine were throwing their annual Memorial Day gathering and I’d run into the house to grab my wife a brew. I stuffed the last of my food into my mouth to free up my hands and was digging around in the back of the fridge when I heard the back door, which was located beside it, begin to slide open. I felt someone trying to get around the open door, so I made room by going upright and shutting the door.
It took my brain a few seconds to realize who I was looking at, and from the look in her eyes she was going through the same clicks of recognition. I said her name in disbelief and wonder, and when she said my name back to me with the same tone, my heart damn near burst out of my chest.
She was my freshman year Acting teacher at college. I won’t broadcast her name without permission but she was, hands down, the single best teacher I’d had, and my experience in her class was the most rewarding thing during an otherwise-struggling time. To run into her again, after decades, was not something I ever expected to do.
The Acting teachers I had past her didn’t really like me all that much, nor did I feel like they were teaching me. When I struggled (or, admittedly, was difficult) I always felt like I was being judged, not corrected or taught or redirected.
She, on the other hand, guided us back on the path when we would stray off it. She pushed us past boundaries and our comfort zones by joining us, by being in those moments of vulnerability with us. When she did one such exercise with me, I felt really scared to show “myself” to my fellow students, whom I was always awestruck by, but she was with me in the moment, easing me out of a shell I didn’t know I was encased in. That moment gave me the strength to reclaim the name most of you know me by, “Mookie,” after I’d struggled to wear it proudly when I went off to college.
Of course none of that came out when I saw her. I almost dropped my beer, half-swallowed my mouth full of food, and hugged her with blubbering joy. It was incredible to get that reaction in return. After decades of students going through her class, most of whom were probably better actors than I ever was (I dropped out of the Acting program before I graduated), that she remembered me and fondly so was more than my heart was ready for.
My gratitude to her, and to that moment yesterday, remains immense.
If we meet up again, and I hope we do, I’ll be sure to have more composure and my head out of a refrigerator.