Later and Greater

      I just celebrated a birthday not too long ago and the folks at work made it so very special and fun. I had a delicious homemade cake, lots of hugs, some cards, a balloon and a slightly off key rendition of the Happy Birthday Song by some of my favorite seventh grade students. It was wonderful! What struck me most about this birthday was that it took so little stuff to make me feel special and so very loved. All it took were some thoughtful people who went out of their way to let me know that they cared. That got me thinking, how could I do that for someone else? How could I make them feel as special as I did on my birthday? How could I pay that forward?

      I rummaged through my desk until I found a copy of an old employee information sheet that had on it addresses, phone numbers, and you guessed it, birthdays! I began checking off the ones in January and found that a friend of mine that had just retired would be celebrating her birthday soon. This friend is a little shy so I won't use her name, instead I will just call her the firefighter. You probably have a few of those at your workplace. The firefighters are the first ones on the scene. They are the ones we depend on to make things right, to ease our stress, to take care of the inevitable, ill timed disaster. In our school the fire may have started because the substitute assigned to a classroom got sick or maybe there was an emergency and no sub could be found. There may have been a traffic pile up so teachers were running late and classrooms needed to be covered. It could have been testing day and some of the volunteers did not show. Whatever sparked the crisis the firefighters are the first ones there to help provide relief in whatever way they can.

      When I first started teaching I remember thinking that those people were crazy. Why on earth would you rush up to the office to willingly give up a valuable planning period without even being asked? No sir, my method was more of a "fly low" variety. Just stay out of the way until the trouble had passed. It is like the car wreck along the side of the road, you have the firefighters, the EMTs  and the police all there to help the injured, clear the wreck and keep the traffic moving. Then you have the dreaded rubber neckers. They are not interested in helping but want to know what happened so they can tell everybody what they saw, snap a picture or two and update their Facebook and Twitter status. Finally there are the  drivers who are cussing at the rubber neckers to get out of the way so they can get to their destination in a timely manner. I would probably fall into the later category. Oh, it is not that I am heartless or rude, I am just a "git r done" kind of girl. I have things to do and work to accomplish and items to check off my to do list so get out of my way and let me rule the world in peace... please.  :)

      My friend however, is a helpful firefighter. She sees the big picture. She understands the concept of reaping and sowing. She is busy planting some seed. Everybody knows that story but recently our preacher added a new twist to it that made me think. He called it the later/greater principle. Basically it means that what you sow comes back, later and greater. Consider the tomato plant. You sow a tiny seed and soon you have a large plant with lots of fruit. Later and greater. The same thing holds for bad seed. It comes back riding that dreaded karma bus, later and greater.

      Thanks in part to my friend, I am beginning to understand why the firefighters of the world do what they do. So to pay it forward this week, I got a balloon, a card, and a yummy chocolate thing from Panera and surprised my favorite firefighter with a birthday gift. She never saw it coming. I also decided that I am going to keep checking that birthday list this year and let my wonderful colleagues know just how much I value and appreciate them.

      Happy Birthday to my favorite firefighter! Hope you have the opportunity to experience many more later and greaters!


  Laurie