In the last two days, The Moth – the preeminent storytelling organization in the world – has oddly brought me in contact with two of my former students in fairly bizarre ways.
Yesterday, a former student who was in my class 15 years ago texted me this photo, which was sent to her by another former student of 15 years ago who spotted it on the NYC Snapchat feed. It’s a photograph of me performing at The Moth Ball on Tuesday night. The NYC Snapchat feed was handed over to The Moth for the evening, so it was full of photos from the event. As my former student said, “That’s going to be seen by a lot of people!”
I can’t imagine what it would be like to see Mrs. Laverne or Mrs. Shultz on some public social media feed, performing at an event alongside celebrities like Carrie Brownstein.
Yes, kids. I’m still alive and still doing stuff.
Earlier in the week, Elysha ran into a former student who was in my very first class 18 years ago. She lives in Australia but was in town visiting family. She told Elysha that recently, she met a guy in Australia and the two got talking. In the midst of the conversation, he brought up a show about storytelling that he had just been listening to and said, “I heard this great story by an American named Matthew Dicks.”
My former student, who is now a 24 year-old woman, said, “Matthew Dicks? He was my second grade teacher.”
On the other side of the world, a man heard my story on the radio and mentioned it to a girl who I once taught when she was seven years old.
Only The Moth could make something like this happen.
