OPINION

OPINION | STEVE STRAESSLE: The little things

The English teacher studied her notes. "All right, who can tell me what 'anecdote' means?"

Silence.

"Come on, guys, summer wasn't that long. What's an anecdote?"

More silence.

A bullish boy with a buzz cut slowly raised his hand as he slouched in his chair. He squinted in thought. "Isn't that the thing that makes you feel better after you get some poison or something?"

The teacher smiled with a sigh. The class, despite its previous silence, rippled with snickers.

"No," she said, giving in. "An anecdote is a short story often used to introduce a deeper meaning."

The boy nodded. "But it also helps you when you have a snake bite, right?"

We live in a sea of anecdotes, those little life narratives that come together to create a broader meaning for who we are. Our personal anecdotes, the short stories of our existence, tell chapter by chapter the essence of our being. They appear often as small words, as brief instances, as the little things in life.

I remembered that when I heard the words "Be strong, fear not," echoing through the otherwise silent high school locker room. The words came from the first reading of scripture in a team Mass before a football game. The priest swayed a little in his green cassock, the players sat on the ground in perfect purple lines, and coaches stood behind them, their backs pressed against gray walls.

Be strong, fear not. Those seemingly simple words reverberated against the steel lockers and tile floors. Little words, they are. The players seemed to pay attention and I wondered if they understood what was happening around them. Of course, their focus was on the football game before them, going over and over in their heads the coming sights and sounds. They would soon be blinded by stadium lights and feel the thump of the school band in their chests.

A high school football game is a little thing. Despite the heat of the moment, it disappears like a wisp, rising in a beautifully obvious fashion and then evaporating into the forward motion of life. The joy of victory or sting of defeat doesn't last long within boys as they respond to the demands of life off the field. A game is a little thing, for sure.

Sometimes, we get to have an interaction that stays with us long after it's over. We engage with a stranger in an uplifting way. We read a beautiful line of verse or hear a lyric that makes perfect and unique sense to our individual selves in that exact moment. We meet a memory and accept the joy or pain it brings, allowing it to wash through our bodies and travel back to wherever memories wait.

These are all little things.

Sometimes we give or receive a handful of flowers. We bandage the skinned knee of a child. We stand in the falling rain and feel each individual drop.

At times, we get to build those little things into movement. We roll those events into a ball of motion and determination. Courage never happens by accident, duty is never happenstance. Instead, we display courage and do our duty because we've taken the little things we've experienced and built them into a life worth protecting, an obligation worth fulfilling.

This is why a mother tears up on her child's first day of school. This is why a man bends his knee when proposing to the woman of his dreams. Small gestures are more than the moment in which they live; they consist of all the days that came before them.

A quick conversation is a little thing. A direct correction, a genuine compliment, emotion raised by beautifully spoken words are all little things. It's easy to understand this as we get older.

These little stories, these anecdotes that we shelved are all those instances that we use to create the libraries of our souls. The stories join together to become the great repository of who we are. In our adult lives, we often pick those little things out one by one and remember them, study them, turn them over again and again in our hands. Then, we step back and admire the great hall of ideals we built.

These are the short stories explaining who we are in the simple interactions of humanity. Maybe anecdotes really do hold back the poison; maybe they do heal the soul. Because, in the end, they are what allow us to be strong, to fear not.

The boys in the locker room played their hearts out on the field that night. They sweated, they achieved. After the game, they ate together and made plans for the rest of the weekend, leaving behind the moment that was so important just minutes before. They knew they experienced something special, but, in youth, they understood there would be more games to play, more weekend plans to make, more experiences to come.

One day, they'll understand the importance of their personal bookcase of anecdotes, their intimate collection of small memories.

Then, they'll know what those of us gifted with age know.

The little things mean everything.


Steve Straessle, whose column appears every other Saturday, is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at [email protected]. Find him on Twitter @steve_straessle.

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