Forty Seconds That Lasted Forty Years
“Rick, you got a minute?”
I remember those words as clearly as if they were spoken yesterday. More than forty years have passed since my high school principal stopped me in the hallway, but I can still hear his gentle voice. I remember very little about the classes I attended that year, which may have something to do with the fact that I occasionally found more interesting places to spend my time. But I remember that conversation.
I was not an exceptional student. My grades were mediocre, and I had developed a particular fondness for the weight room and the restroom during instructional hours. Occasionally, I borrowed a hall pass to make my travels appear legitimate. I suspect the principal knew considerably more about my attendance habits than I realized.
So when he stopped me, I assumed I was in trouble.
He was a small, soft-spoken man, quite unlike the imposing school administrators I had encountered before. He told me that someone had been talking about me.
That was hardly reassuring. Given my academic record and extracurricular wandering, I could think of several things someone might have said, and few of them were complimentary.
But then he surprised me. Someone had told him that if the school had more Rick Fosters, it would be a much better place. I was astonished.
Frankly, I doubted anyone had said it. I wasn't exactly a model student. Perhaps he invented the compliment because he thought I needed encouragement. Perhaps someone really had said it. I have never known.
What I do know is that he took a moment to tell me something good about myself. No lecture about attendance. No warning about wasted potential. Just a few kind words before he went on his way.
To understand why I remember that conversation, you need to know something about another principal I encountered a few years earlier.
In sixth grade, our teacher had a Monday morning ritual. During roll call, each student had to announce whether he was a “packer,” a “buyer,” or a “free luncher.” I was the only free luncher in the class. Every Monday, I announced my family's poverty to everyone within hearing distance.
I hated it.
Eventually, I complained to my father, who wrote a check so I could buy lunch like the other students. Unfortunately, the check bounced.
The principal summoned me to his office. He was a large, intimidating man who slammed the returned check onto his desk and angrily demanded why my father had written a check without sufficient funds.
I was eleven years old. I knew we were poor, but I knew considerably less about banking. I had no explanation for my father's financial decisions. I took the check and returned to class, embarrassed by circumstances I had neither created nor could control.
Years later, another principal stopped me in another school. This time, I wasn't being asked to explain something I had done wrong. I was being told that someone thought I was worth having around.
Two principals. Two brief conversations. Neither man probably gave much thought to what he had said afterward. Yet I have remembered both for more than forty years.
I've spent much of my adult life in education, as a teacher and administrator. I know how busy a school day can become. There are meetings, problems, paperwork, and people who need more time than we have to give.
My high school principal could easily have walked past me. He had a school to run and hundreds of students to oversee. Nothing required him to stop and share a compliment with a teenager whose academic achievements were hardly worth celebrating.
But he stopped.
And here I am, more than forty years later, writing about a conversation that probably lasted forty seconds.
November invites us to think about gratitude. This year, I find myself especially grateful for the people who took time to encourage me when I needed it. Some offered opportunities. Others offered guidance. One offered a few words in a hallway.
I doubt my principal remembered our conversation the next morning. I remembered and I wonder how many conversations I've had over the years that meant more to someone else than they did to me. I hope there have been many. I also wonder how many opportunities I've missed because I was too busy to notice someone who needed encouragement.
We often imagine that changing someone's life requires something extraordinary. Sometimes it does. But sometimes it requires nothing more than recognizing a person who needs to hear something good about himself.
My principal gave me forty seconds of his time. I've carried those seconds for more than forty years.
I wonder who you will speak to in the next forty seconds. And I wonder if, forty years from now, that person will still remember what you said.
