CHANGE YOUR
LIFE
Life stile:-“Are you too stupid to do anything right?” These words –said by a woman to a little boy who was evidently her son- were spoken because he had walked away from her. And they were said at a volume high enough that all the strangers in the vicinity could hear. Chastised, the boy returned quietly to the woman’s side, his eyes downcast.
Not a big moment, perhaps. Y et small moments sometimes last a very long time. And a few words- though they mean little at the time to the people who say them-can have enormous power. “Are you too stupid to do anything right?” Words like that can echo.
I recently heard a story from a man named Malcolm Dalkoff. He’s 48; the last 24 years he has been a professional writer, mostly in advertising. Here is what he told me:
Change stile:- As a boy, Dalkoff was terribly insecure and shy. He had few friends and no self-confidence. Then one day in October 1965, his secondary school English teacher, Ruth Brauch, gave the class an assignment. The students had been reading To kill a Mockingbird. Now they were to write their own chapter that would follow the last chapter of the novel.
Dalkoff wrote his chapter and turned it in. Today he cannot recall anything special about the chapter he wrote, or what grade Mrs. Brauch gave him. What he does remember what he will never forget are the four words Mrs. Brauch wrote in the margin of the paper: “They changed his life. “Until I read those wards, I had no idea of who I was or what I was going to be.” He said. “After reading her note, I went home and wrote a short story, something I had always dreamed of doing but never believed I could do.”
School Life:- Over the rest of that year in school, he wrote many short stories and always brought them to school for Mrs. Brauch to evaluate. She was encouraging, tough and honest. “She was just what I needed,” Dalkoff said.
He was named co-editor of his secondary school newspaper. His confidence grew; his horizons broadened; he started off on a successful, fulfilling life. Dalkoff is convinced that none of this would have happened had that woman not written those four words in the margin of his paper.
