This Is Your Life

Back in the 1950s, there used to be a show called "This Is Your Life". The concept behind the show was to "surprise guests and then take them through a retrospective of their lives in front of an audience, including appearances by colleagues, friends, and family." This was meant to cheer up soldiers who were in recovery after the Second World War. I was not old enough to watch this series, but I heard about it and the various parodies and spoofs that it inspired.

Well, I'm having a This-Is-Your-Life-like series of moments lately, partly due to this pandemic and limiting my socializing to online and/or distant interactions.

My Senior Prom Date

I had followed Sarah Wheatley on Twitter for a long time. In fact (after reviewing my Twitter history), we were part of a mini-PLN that investigated the use of Tumblr - back in 2014! I never really thought long or hard about her last name until we were chatting after participating in the first ChoirChoirChoir! virtual sing-a-long. That last name seemed awfully familiar ... and after mixing her up with another Sarah, who is also a teacher-librarian, from British Columbia, I figured out the connection. Sarah's husband, Sean, was my date for senior prom!

I gather she got permission from him to share photos: the neatest thing from today is that I discovered that @ksarahwheatley’s husband was my high school prom date (&childhood/teen friend!) (reposted to fix typos) pic.twitter.com/malHJftJ0n

— Diana Maliszewski (@MzMollyTL) March 24, 2020

Not only is Sarah's husband an old childhood friend, he works at a location within walking distance from my house! This has been an utterly delightful discovery. After this social distancing is over, Sarah and I look forward to getting together in person so Sean and I can meet after 30 years!

My Flower Girl

Emergency response remote learning started on Monday, April 6 for many of us in Ontario. (Taking Tim King's lead, I don't call it e-learning for many reasons.) In the attempt to still mark days of significance, many educators wore pink for the International Day of Pink on Wednesday, April 8. One such educator posted her photo on Twitter and I recognized her immediately. She was the flower girl at my wedding! Compare the two photos and you can see Concetta is still the same sweet person!

A number of years ago, I heard from a former student who remembered me from when I was a student-teacher (!) at my very first Faculty of Education placement (!!) in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board. What a pleasant shock that was. I was amazed at what she remembered about the 1994-95 school year when she was in Grade 5. Amanda, you totally made my week back then with your message.

I also heard from Mackenzie, a former student at my current school, in 2017, several years after she graduated. I'm still in regular contact with former students Andrew Li and Diana Si, for which I am grateful. Other alumni have visited the school too, to my delight. (In fact, one couple did their engagement photo shoot at the elementary school, because that's where they met!)

This led me to contemplate who I'd love to hear from, even just briefly. I'd love to be able to tell some of those teachers I had how much I appreciated their support back when I was younger and less self-assured. That would include Mr. Sturm, my Grade 12 and OAC English teacher at Birchmount Park C.I. and Don and Pauli Quinlan, who trusted me enough to babysit their children.  I'd love to hear from the students I had from my very first permanent teaching jobs, to discover how they grew and changed but stayed the same.

One of my stay-at-home projects that I do when I am not working-from-home is meant to spread that This-Is-Your-Life / what-is-your-impact vibe. My sister and I are hand-writing letters to all our maternal first cousins to tell them about our favourite memories of them and what we appreciate about them. This has been a fascinating project to undertake. My memory can be Swiss-cheesy (aka full of holes) and it was interesting to compare notes with my sister about what she recalls vs what I remember. Thank goodness for photos to jog the old synapses.

What impact do you have on others? Most of these connections have been positive ones. I pray that I have not left sour impressions with anyone (or at least, if I accidentally did, that they were able to rise above the negative interaction and still have a good life). I wonder how this pandemic and time of social distancing, school closures and interrupted regular schooling with affect the memories of today's teachers and students. I need to have a meeting with my team and my administrator to decide what we are going to do about the school yearbook. Do we proceed or shelve? Should we preserve this year because it so unique, despite the unhappy memories it might invoke? We'll see.