When I was in the 12th grade, I had an English teacher named Mrs. Anderson (I think I had her my 11th grade year too). She was a stickler for grammar. You know the drill, dangling participles, modifiers, and clauses that you got right, or not, with cuts across a page of prose with a red ink pen. But we learned. We tweaked and nurtured the words to get them just right for a good grade.
Those were the days, uh?
Whether or not writing our autobiography in our senior year was a part of the Cleveland Public School curricula, Mrs. Anderson did her own thing and threw the gauntlet down for her classes to write one. I think it was a great exercise. I wished I still had my paper/autobiography that I wrote, but it is long gone.
However, I do remember some main points I wrote about that have stuck with me all these years. One was to graduate college. I checked that box, thankfully. I wanted to marry and have children, and again, that box has been checked. The most interesting thing I remember is that if I played my cards correctly, I would end up in Washington D.C. and be asked to be an ambassador...to a country. I know that is some cockamamie thinking, but I had dreams like any other kid. Ms. Magazine was out by then, and the sky was the limit for young girls to follow the path to do anything. If boys could be an ambassador, girls could too.
What I didn't fully realize then is that we can become an ambassador of a lot of other things in life. My hubby Bill is an ambassador of continued learning and kindness. So instead of having the dream of becoming an ambassador to some cool place like France or Italy, or Polska-Poland, I unbeknownst became an ambassador of parenting a childhood cancer kid/adult/survivor. I even wrote a book about it (grin).
What are you an ambassador of today?
BSoleille!
Terri
 |
| A spectacular December sunset! |
No comments:
Post a Comment