Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
Don’t forget to click the purple button to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.
Who was the first person who ever believed in you?
Way back in 1974, someone changed my life.
For a lot of reasons, which I’ve told you about before, I failed all my final school exams that year. And with that, I lost the chance of the job that I’d been offered.
Along with my father and the school, we investigated how I might resolve the situation and at least gain some qualifications, if not the career that I wanted to pursue.
I was told that I would be able to stay on at school and retake the exams, but what about the job? I spoke to the company, to tell them I’d failed to gain the appropriate entry qualifications. While they were sympathetic, that was about it. After all, they had so many applicants that they weren’t bothered about one of them not making the grade.
It looked like my dreams were gone.
To my surprise, a few days later, I got a letter from my prospective employer agreeing to hold my offer for the next year’s intake, provided that I passed the appropriate exams in a year’s time.
I went back, applied myself and…, the rest is history.
To cut a long story short, I later learned that one of my teachers had noticed that I was coming back and had investigated why. He knew about my job offer and decided to intervene. Without my knowledge, he had contacted my potential employer on my behalf. Somehow, he had persuaded them to hold the job open for me.
When I spoke to him and thanked him, he was modest about what he’d done. “I knew you wanted to do it and it seemed like the right thing to put a word in for you,” was all he would say. He also suggested that I work hard and that, having been given a second chance, I didn’t mess it up this time.
If he hadn’t done that, who knows what my life might have been? It certainly couldn’t have been much more varied and interesting.
As a coda to the story, I met him, years later. Quite by chance, he was in a queue at a pharmacy. It was just before I retired, he must have been in his late eighties but he recognised me straight away as I wal.
While he waited for his medication, we had a wonderful conversation about how my life had turned out.
All thanks to him.
How about you? Did someone change your life? Please comment below, then head on over to see what the other contributors to this bloghop have to say on the subject.
Until next time.
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Stevie Turner
How lovely to have had such a supportive teacher. You were lucky!
Richard Dee
I know, I doubt that any employer would be swayed in that way now.
Darlene Foster
That is a wonderful story. I also had a teacher who believed in me and encouraged me over and above her duty. I too reconnected with her many years later and thanked her. Teachers can make such a huge difference in a child’s life.
Richard Dee
I was privileged to be able to tell him what his kindness has achieved.
P.J. MacLayne
You proved they both made the right call.
Richard Dee
I was very fortunate to get the chance to justify their faith in me.
Samantha J Bryant
Wonderful story! Teachers are so undervalued. So many of us can attribute some measure of our success to a teacher. @samanthabwriter from
Balancing Act
Richard Dee
It was so special meeting him in later life and telling him the way things had turned out.