When you stand on a stage in front of hundreds of people and tell a story, strange connections can be made.
It’s June 2013. I’m competing in a Moth StorySLAM at The Bitter End. I’m telling a story about my time student-teaching in Mrs. Rothstein’s first-grade class in Berlin, Connecticut. There was a boy in the class named Mathieu who refused to listen to a word I was saying. I was working in the class for about a week, and he had already made me feel stupid. I was embarrassed about my inability to get a six-year-old boy to obey me. I was starting to wonder if I was meant to be a teacher.
I was running our morning meeting for the first time, and Mathieu was once again causing trouble. I finally decided to lay down the law. “If you don’t stop it, I’m going to call your mother!” I told him.
Mathieu’s mother was dead. She had died earlier that year. I knew this, but in my fit of anger and embarrassment, I’d forgotten.
I finish telling that story at The Bitter End and return to my seat. During intermission, a young man approaches me and says, “I know the Mathieu in your story!”
“Not possible,” I say.
“No,” he says. “It’s true.” He cites the unusual spelling of the first name (which was mentioned in the story) and other similarities between his friend and the Mathieu in my story.
They both lost their mothers in the first grade. They both grew up in Connecticut. They both behaved badly in elementary school.
“It can’t be,” I say. “It’s not possible. What are the odds?”
But it was true. A week later, I am exchanging emails with the boy I had taught fourteen years earlier. I apologize for my stupid and callous remark. I hope that he didn’t harbor anger or resentment toward me.
His response: “I don’t remember it at all. I don’t really remember you. I know some man came into our class in first grade for a little while, but then he left.”
So much for leaving an indelible mark on those kids. Still, my fear that I had somehow scarred Mathieu for life was gone. That burden had been lifted.
I lost the slam that night to an exceptional storyteller named Kate Greathead, but for once in my life, winning didn’t matter. Or almost didn’t matter. I lost by a tenth of a point, which always stings. But I had won something much greater that night.