###and now a life lesson from the epic storybook of ryan’s life…
when i was in 7th or 8th grade…we had to take this class called “current events”…it basically consisted of just reading a few magazines and having discussions about what was going on in the world…you know, in a dumbed-down fashion that squirrelly little junior highers could understand…
it was a pretty decent class for a small-town high school…mostly because mr. wallace would keep it pretty informal and if i recall, never gave us much homework…he would often venture off from the subject at hand and ask a few trivia-like questions to keep us on our toes…one particular day i remember we were talking about that TWA flight that crashed into the ocean a few years back (flight 800 if i remember correctly)…so mr. wallace asked, in the quizzical manner that he always would, “does anyone happen to know what TWA stands for?”…
me, being the young, random thought-filled knowledge bank that i was in junior high (and even today some might argue), decided to quickly blurt out, “trans world airlines”…now, i don’t know how in God’s green earth i knew what that meant…the most popular theory i’ve come with is that i could have subliminally heard it on some sort of news program discussing that very air disaster…at any rate, i knew what it meant…and i decided to impress 25-30 of my fellow classmates and mr. wallace with my mind-numbing mental prowess…
but that’s not the clincher…not even close…see, before i barely finished with my astonishing informational display…mr. wallace, nearly at the top of his lungs, stunned the entire class by stating rather loudly, “NOW THIS KID…IS GOING TO DO SOMETHING WITH HIS LIFE!”…he may have went on to say other things…but by this point i could already feel the eyes of every kid in the classroom burning numerous craters into the back of my head…and the heat was overwhelming i tell yah…so much so that my face flushed many different shades of bright red…i gave a faint smile and i think i nearly mustered a half-hearted wave…as if to say “lucky guess”…awkard laugh…but all i really wanted to do was bury my now inflated head flat into my desk…
it’s funny…the things that our brain chooses to remember from the stacks upon stacks of days gone by…why i remember that particular moment so amazingly well i don’t really know…why mr. wallace chose to explode after i piped up with a reply i don’t know either…did he really believe that i was destined for some form of greatness all because i quickly answered his whimsical little query? was my life on the fast track to success now because my junior high science teacher who doubled for the current events teacher for nine weeks thought that i was going to do something with my life because TWA just so happens to stand for trans world airlines?
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the other day i was standing in line at the local bulk food store across the street from work to get some lunch as i often do…and just so happened to bump into a former classmate who i hadn’t talked to in a month of sundays…we began to catch up on what all has been going on in our lives since high school…since my life after high school can be summed up in about a minute or less…we moved on to the adventures of many of our friends and classmates…where they’re at and the exciting things they’re doing in life…
and like straight out of a movie…there was mr. wallace…i kid you not…he was actually there standing in line…like some kind of jedi spirit there to remind me of the tirade he gave nearly ten years previous…i don’t think he recognized me…and i barely recognized him (age does a funny thing to junior high science teachers)…but there i was…talking about the greatness of others…and there he was reminding me of the greatness he once foretold…
i’ve had five years now to get something going with my life…to “fulfill the prophesy” if you will…and sometimes when i look at what i’ve achieved…or where i’m at…i wonder what the heck i’m doing…still living at home…still trying to make it through college…where is the adventure?…where is the ambition?…why aren’t i out there doing something great with my life?
i don’t know why mr. wallace decided to say that about me…and i definitely don’t know why God has me in this particular place in life right now…but what i do know…is that if something great is ever going to happen with my life…
i’m the only person who can go out there and do something about it…
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lesson learned: you never know when a random factoid or an easily-decipherable acronym is really going to come in handy…
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######Note: This post is from a very old Xanga blog of mine. A very, very old blog. In fact, it’s practically a museum. Be sure not to touch any old references or links. You won’t break them, they are most certainly already broken.