As good as my memory is…and if anyone here has read much of anything I have written on these pages you know I have a vault…I still fail miserably at remembering to get to all that I need to in order to make things right.  Well, if not right, a least a little better.

When Doug Rothrock’s Dad passed away I failed to send him an email.  I failed to send him a card.  I failed to call up.  I failed.

What was my excuse?  I read about it online when I was out of town. Of course, I thought, I will get around to getting word to Doug as soon as I get back in town.

If Doug reads this, it will be the first he has heard me make mention of it.  Shame on me.  Don’t ask me how long that has been.  That is even more shameful.

Doug and I went to church together.  Doug and I played softball together.  Doug and I did business together.  I suppose if I had needed a loan, he would have heard from me sooner.  More shame on me.

I have no idea where Mrs. Patti Miller is these days.  She had no idea how a few strokes of a pen helped my ego when I needed it most.  “You are an excellent writer”.  That is what she posted not online…but in my 10th grade high school yearbook some thirty years ago.

Mrs. Miller knew I loved to write.  And guess what?  One of the few things I feel I can actually give my high school credit for…understand I am talking about the school and not the great teachers I had…the school let Mrs. Miller teach a Sports Literature class.  It was the first of its kind and probably the last of its kind.  Why they let Mrs. Miller teach it, I have no earthly idea.  Don’t care.  I do know her sports acumen was limited.  Mine was abundant.  Also abundant was my curiosity with putting words together to both sound good and stir some kind of emotional chords.

I was writing prose.  I was writing poetry.  I had no idea why and very few around could understand why or how I was so attached to my notebooks that housed verse after verse after verse of my attentions of the day.  Well, I guess things have not changed a great deal in thirty years after all.  I was mistaken.

But I was not mistaken by the words that Mrs. Miller put in my yearbook.  They were encouraging words.  I believe they were honest words.  She didn’t have to choose those words.

Though I have not looked upon her handwritten message in many years, I still remember how it is sitting on a page somewhere in my office.  That old yearbook is holding up a great deal of significance.

Words like that matter.  I am fortunate to have other first-hand knowledge.

We’ll call her “Annie”.

Annie was in a 9th grade English class I was teaching and she worked very hard.  She was a fair athlete.  On the track team that spring, she threw the shot-put.  When she found out a meet was going to be held never my old high school…I live nearby…Annie asked that I come to the meet and give her what I call an “inspirational address”.   I gave said address.  Annie broke the school record that day in the shot-put.

When Sectional time came at the end of the season, Annie asked that I I give her another “inspirational address”.  I told her I could not be at the meet.  I then told her I had an even better idea.

What I did was write Annie an inspirational address.  I gave her a pep talk on paper.  The words were in a sealed envelope with her name on it.  I gave her explicit instructions on when to open it along the bus ride…about half way to their destination.

I wish I could report some great result from the Sectional Meet.  I can’t.  I don’t remember what she did.  I do, however, remember her thanking me for my words of encouragement.  I was thankful she was thankful.  Then I went about the rest of my business of the day and probably never gave it another thought for nearly year.

Annie never asked for another inspirational address from me.  I never asked if she wanted or needed another one.

When the Sectional Meet came around at the end of Annie’s sophomore year she participated again.  When the team loaded onto the bus, Annie was carrying a shot put in one hand and a year-old envelope in another.  When the bus driver quizzed Annie about the envelope, she told him it was Mr. Johnson’s “inspirational address”.

The words I never gave Doug Rothrock.

The words Mrs. Miller gave to me.

The words I gave Annie.

They all matter.

So…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson