The Kids Who Came to My Potluck

The School Page

The idea came from the candle, actually. I had lit it, because I was not going to waste a candle just because it hurt my feelings.

I was sitting in the quiet with it burning, and I thought about all the kids. Not Brian. The other ones.

The four hundred a day for twenty-eight years. The Dannys.

The school district has a Facebook page. When I retired they put up a little post with a picture of me at the steam table and a few lines.

It got more comments than I expected. Hundreds of them. Former students saying things.

Mrs. Judy always knew my name, one said. Mrs. Judy gave me extra rolls on Fridays, said another.

Then one that undid me. Mrs. Judy was the only adult who was nice to me that whole year.

I had been retired three weeks. I was planning a little potluck, nothing much.

A few neighbors and the ladies from church, in the fellowship hall at the Methodist church, because they let you use it for a clean-up fee.

Sitting there with that candle, I thought, what if I asked them. The kids. What if I just asked.

So I typed it out, slow, with two fingers. I asked the district if I could post it.

A young woman in the office, who I had fed for six years, said of course Mrs. Judy and put it up for me.

It said I was having a retirement potluck at the Methodist fellowship hall on the last Saturday in May. It said anyone I had ever fed was welcome.

Bring a dish if you can, I wrote, and yourself if you cannot. I said I would love to see their faces grown.

I figured maybe a dozen might come. I made a pan of my scalloped potatoes, which feeds twenty.

I thought that was wildly optimistic. Then I went to bed.

By morning the post had been shared a hundred and some times. The comments would not stop.

I am sixty-one and I do not fully understand how a thing travels on there. But it traveled.

People I fed in 1999 were tagging people I fed in 2011. A whole thread of them argued about whether I made the cinnamon rolls from scratch. I did.

They argued about whether the pizza was better than the high school’s. It was.

The young woman in the office called me on Thursday. Mrs. Judy, she said, I think you should know the number.