Of all the tech zillionaires, I am starting to believe that Mark Zuckerberg is the most deserving. Granted, what he did from a technological standpoint isn't that impressive. He didn't create an operating system or a suite of products. He didn't invent the iEverything and 99 cent downloads.
What he's done, though, is to create a way for people to connect, re-connect and stay connected.
As a person who believes that your relationships are the most important thing in your life (next to your personal integrity), I just can't overstate how much this means to me.
Prior to Facebook, every now and then, I'd find a way to reconnect with an old friend. Tommy Meunier and I served in the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea together, within artillery range of the DMZ. We were both very young. I was 18 when we met and he was probably 19. We formed a fast friendship and served our tours.
In the pre-Facebook days, I was able to use the internet to find him again. I sometimes wondered if people thought I was some strange stalker back in those days. Probably once a month, somebody's name would pop into my head and I'd do a Yahoo search on them to see if I could find them. I'd shoot them an e-mail that was the equivalent of saying, "Hey, I stood next in line to you at 7-11 once. How have you been?"
I'm convinced that a lot of folks simply didn't remember me. Others just didn't have that much interest in re-connecting with an acquaintance from years or decades ago.
Facebook? It has really changed all that. It's so easy and natural to touch base with folks. This is Six Degrees of Separation taken to it's high-tech extreme.
One person I reconnected with just yesterday was a teacher I had in Junior High. He taught social studies and news staff. He was my 8th grade football coach. (He also cut me from the 7th grade basketball team... an act I can easily forgive since a different coach cut me from the 8th grade team.)
He instilled in me a love of journalism. He had been a professional sports writer for the Akron Beacon Journal prior to his teaching days. Although I decided (perhaps wrongly) that journalism wasn't the path I would take in life, this was part of the spark that made me a prolific (though usually not particularly interesting) writer for the rest of my life. (Hence, this blog.)
He was one of the teachers who really made a personal connection with students, the type of teacher whose name came up whenever me and my friends would talk about teachers we enjoyed, or who had excited us about some academic topic. He had a true gift.
One anectdote still stays with me about this teacher. I had written an editorial about a guy named David Toma, a sort of inspirational speaker who was the inspiration for the TV character "Baretta". Apparently some concerned parents groups had raised money so he could come to our school and give us a scared-straight type speech about the dangers of drugs.
Personally, I thought it was a big waste of time. The kids doing drugs weren't going to stop based on the speech and the rest of us who weren't doing drugs had to sit through the presentation, too.
So, I wrote an unflattering editorial about the speech. It came to the attention of the Junior High principal who called both me and my teacher into his office.
The intent was to ask me not to publish the editorial. Keep in mind, I was in the 9th grade at the time. 14 years old. When merely asking me not to publish the article wasn't working, the principal then said, "You realize that if you publish this article, we could get in trouble."
In a spirit of both cluelessness and 14 year old moxy, I replied, "And...?"
I saw my teacher out of the corner of my eye and instead of having a facial expression of, "hey, you 14 year old punk, how dare you act like getting me in trouble isn't any concern of yours", he was laughing. It was one of those laughs where he didn't want anybody to see him laughing (certainly not his boss, the principal), but he was laughing!
Chuckling so hard, no matter how he tried, he couldn't conceal it.
In the movies, we see all sorts of examples of people who will put their careers on the line in order to do the right thing. In real life, it's sad to say, we seldom do.
Ever the teacher, he taught me a very valuable lesson that day.
Even a 14 year old has the right to free expression. (Granted, in the context of a school, this has some limitations, none of which I approached by expressing a rational personal opinion on a public speaker.)
He taught me about the first amendment, which he taught in government class, and lived as a journalist. It is perhaps the most important of our freedoms. It may not occur to most people that the principal of a junior high is "the state", but he most certainly is.
To this day, I have a firm belief that individual rights are paramount in a free society. That people have a right to speak truth to power. That every voice should be heard. That even children are entitled to a viewpoint and personal rights.
Would I have come to this without this teacher? Perhaps. However, the events of that day have stuck with me for nearly 3 decades afterwards. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this lesson made an impression.
The other lesson from that day? That even when the fit hits the shan, such as your boss is ticked off and some 14 year old punk doesn't mind jeopardizing your job, sometimes the best thing to do is laugh.
It's a long hard ride if you don't have a sense of humor.
So, here's to great teachers and the ability to reconnect with them decades later. He's approaching retirement, now. I hope the years have been kind to him and will continue to be. He's thinking he would like to be a guide at a national historical site when he retires. If he does, I will make a point to make a trek so he can teach me for at least one more day.
No comments:
Post a Comment