Sitting alone in a crowded room at the age of twelve I smell charred meat wafting around me. I wonder why we always eat at the same place for all family gatherings; I guess because eating anywhere else is a sin in the Lane Bible. Thinking of warm sweaty bodies pushed, shoved, and jostled all around me makes my body quiver with disgust.

When I look around I see a baby in a stroller looking at me so I smile in return. She giggles with glee and I think “Babies are so cute, free, and innocent to the world.” Just as I begin to make funny faces at her I get pulled away by the sounds of my boisterous family arriving at the table. As usual we begin with the same greetings, “Hello, how are you? How’s school? What have you been up to?” and the same responses, “I’m good. Schools the same. And not much.”

Eating my mildly warm food I peer around at all the other tired faces and wait for a conversation I can interject into arise. After the excruciating time of having to stay quiet my Grammy turns towards me and asks me a question that will decide a lot of what I will do in the future. She asks me “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Like a normal kid I shrug my shoulders and continue to feast on the delicious lumps of vanilla ice cream I was presented moments ago. Although I didn’t want to talk about the topic of my future at the moment it seemed that everyone else did. They continued to stare at me with awaiting eyes and ready to hang on to my every word like some superstar. I tried to magically come up with an answer to who I was supposed to be in the next ten years and came up blank. I didn’t think I had any talents or any useful skills. The more I thought about it, and remembered the moment I had with the baby, the more I realized how much I loved being around younger kids. I had finally came up with an answer to the long awaited question and I thought it sounded pretty good considering most of the women in my family had the same job. I took a deep breath and spoke as I exhaled, “I think I want to work with kids. Maybe a teacher?” I stare at the blank faces around me and think I didn’t say the right thing. Except when I started doubting myself that’s when the encouragement started flowing. My family nodded in agreement and said how wonderful they thought it was that I wanted to do something so noble at such a young age and how my answer just showed how I can put others before myself. However through all of the jabbering I heard the words of my Grammy. She said that she could see me as a teacher. Taking control and loving on all of those kids. Helping them see the good in themselves and teaching them more than just multiplication. She could see me doing something that would help others see their own potential and that I would be wonderful at it.

Through the years my Grammy’s speech has effected a lot of what I do, what classes I take, and the person I am. Every day I try to live up to her vision of me and it inspires me to take my thoughts and make them actions. Now, a senior in high school, I have a plan for my future and know what I will do to get there. I have put my dream as a teacher into action by taking a Child Development class and an Education and Training class where I have learned about how children grow and then I will go to an elementary school and be an intern in one of their classes.

The encouragement from one person to do something I thought about gave me the inspiration to go above and beyond the call of duty to achieve all of my goals. Five years after the day that changed my life, and the day my Grammy probably does not remember, I know my decision to be an educator was the right one.