Dear teacher who probably sat alone at lunch because you bucked the system most teachers put up with,

There may have been a time, depending on which point of my education you came into my life, that I did not like you.  That's ok.  It was never your job to make me like you.  It was your job to make me remember you.  

You were the one that drew butcher-paper sized outlines of Harper Lee's most acclaimed characters and made Boo Radley my friend, Scout my mentee, and Atticus my father found among pages of mistreated, misunderstood, disrespected text.  You were the one that told me to write my truth and made a classroom feel like a 60s summer day with freedom and honesty and generous time. You were the one that gave me Joe and his boat and Anne and her birds.  You made me see that I belonged independently, unchangingly among those lucky enough to build sandcastles with words.

You were my first teacher.  You were the one that gave me my first journal, that I owe my greatest love to, my passion, my ambition, my books. You were the one that asked for one thing in return: to trust you with my stories.  You were my first reader, editor, publisher who provided the construction paper and colored pencils for my very first book (royalties not included).  

You were my barrier, my hurdle that I did not think I could ever jump with such short legs (There's no 5'2 track stars).  You were my Big Brother, never letting your scrutinizing eye wander for a second and there were moments when your words felt like the train that finally erased our dear Anna Karenina: 864 pages and absolutely no validation in the end.  Impressing you was my unattainable dream, was proposing to Daisy Buchanan and receiving a resounding 'Yes!'.  You were the one that I did not like on most the days I spent with you.  You were the one that demanded time.

All of you and all the ones that fell in between these three most memorable categories, you are the reason that I am where I am today.  At some point in time, somewhere between handing out quizzes (or not if you abstained from those completely: category 1, I'm looking at you) and monitoring group discussions and delivering great lectures filled with Easter eggs of quotes from authors that I didn't know but whose names I wrote down so that next time, next time I would know better, you said or did something to imprint yourself in my headstrong brain.  You made an impact.  Go now, grab your pen and paper, your district-issued laptop and your notes from years of teaching, years of witnessing and recording all that you have seen (don't pretend that you don't have journals filled with goings-on of your students--they teach you to do this) and write your superintendents, your professors back in school because you succeeded.  You broke the great barrier of getting through to a student.  You fulfilled the bumper stickers and the proverbs written on mugs that you receive at Christmas time from parents of your students.  

I never bought any of you one of those mugs.  I never brought you an apple to place on your desk, because I knew that you would never eat it.  The best teachers never do.  When the lunch bell would ring and you'd shine up that Honey Crisp on the sweater you had on that day, just as you were about to take a bite into it, to enjoy the literal fruit of your labors, a student would come in to ask for your help, to ask for your guidance, to ask for your opinion on an essay that they wrote for another class taught by another teacher who wouldn't have put the apple down if they'd have gone to them to ask for help.  You would have put the apple down. And I know it sounds like such a simple task, but it is one that so many do not do and whether they know it or not, those that eat the apple anyway are not remembered by their students.  You never would have eaten the apple, should I have brought you one.  And that is what really matters in the end.  Isn't it?  

Nobody gives a shit about the apples because let's face it:

you're not in it for the apples.  

Sincerely,  

The student who still remembers you