Dear Readers,
As Educators, we have some understanding of how we influence or touch our students. But we often forget or are not prepared by how much our students touch our lives. Again, I amazed by the touching display by a former student. I gave a round of free books to my advance readers and some of the seniors who had been apart of Drama Club and a few of the Most Words Read Club.
I knew by intsinct or had an inkling that this "Christmas" book, Ex-Mas Song would strike a nerve because of the subject matter. And it has, first with my editor, the female advance readers, a female who emailed me a note through this website, and this former student.
At first, the former student showed me a new tattoo. She had a goal of getting a new tattoo every month, so this was her second or third for the year. But then I looked again and saw that the tattoo was my catchphrase and motto for the book, "cont;nue." And then I looked again and saw that the tattoo was in my own handwriting, taken from the inscription I had written in her copy of Ex-Mas Song.
I was shocked, floored, flabbergasted, and quite humbled. She had honored me in her own way. She had taken the motto and theme of the book to a new level. (Also, another factor, was my own "cont;nue" tattoo on my right wrist). But later that day another student let me know that the tattoo had been mispelled!
I looked at this picure I had taken and sure enough, the tattoo spelled "cont;ue" and not "cont;nue." How had I screwed it up? I had made sure to spell it out in the inscription by taking the motto as it was printed at the beginning of the book. So, I opened the book and checked everywhere I had used the motto and sure enough, it had been misspelled three times. I thought, my editor should have caught that and when I related this incident, the editor was likewise shocked and struck sideways and could only give the apology of "I thought that was the way you wanted it spelled."
I called the man who had done both my tattoo and the former's student tattoo and pointed out the mispelling that I had made and asked if he hadn't noticed it, which, obviously, he hadn't. He laughed for about a minute straight. I got him to stop laughing long enough to offer to pay for a correction to the former student's tattoo, but she did not want any correction made and maintained that she has an original, unique, and one-of-a-kind tattoo.
That she does.