I still remember the sound of the check hitting the principal’s desk.
I was in sixth grade. Every Monday, our teacher asked the class to identify themselves as packers, buyers, or free lunchers. When she called my name, I had to answer, “Free luncher.”
I was the only one.
Sometimes I had to repeat myself so everyone could hear. I dreaded those Monday mornings, the attention, the occasional giggles, and the feeling that something about my life had been announced to the entire classroom.
Eventually, I convinced my father to write a check so I could buy my lunch like everyone else.
For a little while, I was simply a buyer.
Then the check bounced.
The principal called me to his office. He was a large, imposing man whose presence had always intimidated me. He held my father's returned check in his hand, slammed it onto the desk, and demanded to know why someone would write a check without enough money to cover it.
I was eleven years old. I knew nothing about bank accounts or insufficient funds. I only knew that I had wanted to stop being embarrassed in front of my classmates.
I took the check home.
Years later, another principal stopped me in a high school hallway.
“Rick, you got a minute?”
I assumed I was in trouble. My grades were unremarkable, and I occasionally found ways to be somewhere other than the classroom. A conversation with the principal was not something I particularly welcomed.
He was a gentle man, and what he said next caught me completely off guard.
“Rick, someone told me about you.”
I waited.
“They said that if the school had more Rick Fosters, it would be a much better place.”
I remember wondering whether he had the right student.
I wasn't accustomed to thinking of myself as someone who made a place better simply by being there. I had spent much of my childhood trying not to draw attention to myself. Yet here was a man whose opinion mattered, telling me that someone had noticed something good.
He didn't offer a speech or ask anything of me. He simply passed along a few kind words and continued with his day.
I have thought about those two principals many times.
The first probably forgot our encounter before the school day ended. The second may have forgotten his words just as quickly. I have no way of knowing.
What I do know is that I remember both.
I have spent much of my adult life in schools, sometimes as a teacher and sometimes as an administrator. I have spoken to thousands of students over the years, often in conversations lasting only a minute or two. Occasionally, I wonder what they remember.
Those two principals taught me something I have tried to carry into my own work with people. Words have a way of lingering long after a conversation ends. They can leave someone feeling smaller than they already feel, or they can help someone see a little more possibility in themselves.
I have not always chosen my words as carefully as I should have. There are conversations I wish I could revisit and things I wish I had said differently. But I have learned that encouragement need not be elaborate to matter. Sometimes it is simply noticing something good in another person and taking the time to say it.
I never learned who first spoke kindly about me to that high school principal. Someone saw something worthwhile in a young man who struggled to see it himself. The principal could have kept those words to himself, but he didn't.
I can still hear that check hitting the desk. I can also hear a gentle voice telling me that a school would be better with more students like me.
I cannot change the words that were spoken to me all those years ago. But every day, I have the opportunity to choose the words someone else may carry.
This reflection grew out of my work on The People Who Saved Me, a forthcoming companion to my memoir, The Places That Saved Me. It is a collection of stories about the people whose kindness, encouragement, and presence helped shape my life.
