Senior Storytelling Festival Pt. 1 of 2

Stories oftentimes have several different components.  They take course over a long period of time and involve several people or events.  My little story is rather simple.  

It was the winter of my junior year and it had been rough.  I was blue.  Blue in every sense of the word.  Just blue.  I had lost my friend group, and the stresses of my world were pressing down hard on me.  I had no one I felt I could talk to and certainly no one who really cared.  I was floating through my days, wishing that night time would come sooner than it had to.

One cloudy, January day, I needed to stay after school to work on some things for my classes.  I was walking down the 200 hall, just about to pass the art classrooms when my Journalism adviser, Mr. Rees, came walking towards me.

He was obviously getting ready to walk home as he often did.  He had his windbreaker zipped and his backpack slung over his shoulder.  He was talking on his cell phone, in the middle of a seemingly important conversation.

He made eye contact with me and immediately asked the person other the other end of the phone call to hang on for a moment, he held the phone at his side and stopped me.  He asked if I was doing alright and I told him that I was, but he paused for a moment and asked me if I was sure.  Of course I wasn’t going to tell my teacher about what was going on in my personal life, so I lied again and carried on my way.

Sure he doesn’t remember that conversation that happened over a year ago, but I do.

I have reflected on that afternoon many times and because of it, I was never again the person I once was.  Because of that afternoon, I decided to become an english teacher.  Because of that ten second conversation on a cloudy, January afternoon, I chose to take a path that altered the rest of my life.