Success Story

"Mister Caven!"
I lifted my head from my afternoon bike ride's focus. I looked up to see a young man waving to me from the street corner.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
I pulled my bike over to the curb and confessed, "You've got me at a disadvantage here. I probably taught you about three feet ago." I gestured, implying that he must have been half the size when I would have remembered him.
"It's me," he enthused and then gave me the information that made the pronoun make sense, "Daryl Evans."
Then his face became one I recognized. The smile came first, and the eyes. Sure he was six feet tall with a wisp of a mustache and lines that come from years. Now I knew Daryl's eager face all over again.
"How have you been, Daryl?" Saying his name made him even more real.
"I just turned twenty-one," he bounced just a little as he spoke. "I got an apartment. I don't got no kids. I'm doing fine."
Normally I ask former students of mine how they are doing in school, but since he was letting me know what was important in his newly minted adult life, I figure he would tell me if about what was important to him.
"If anybody asks you, you can tell them that you taught a guy who made it!"
I thought about what he told me. His own apartment. No kids. He had made it. I remembered Daryl's years at our school. His own place was a victory. I could get that.
I taught a guy who made it.