It Happened Again Last Week

It happened again last week. To each of us. At a store, someone asked me for help. And at a restaurant someone thought my husband Steve was a celebrity.

“Are you actually John Ritter?” a waiter asked. And he pulled up a photo on his phone to show us the likeness.

When we visited Boston one summer, people approached Steve three times asking if he was a Kennedy.

But mostly they want to know if he’s Robert Redford, the last time being this spring after a hike at the Clifton Gorge, right here in the middle of small-town Ohio.

I’ve never once been mistaken for a movie star. But I am in demand.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” people ask in Macy’s, “Could you tell me where to find a size seven for this shoe?”

At the library, they want me to point them toward the biographies. At Home Depot, they ask for brass pipe fittings. At the history museum, they can’t find the Civil War exhibit.

Maybe it’s because I’m a teacher. I was taught to walk tall and stand confidently, especially when I felt like shrinking back. Your lesson begins, my mentor told me, the moment your students set eyes on you. This first, immediate impression can shape your semester.

My students at the middle school and the prison and the gifted program all affirmed what my mentor said. Not in so many words. But it was clear. On the days I walked into class, closed up and collapsing into myself, they were glad to take up the space. And those were not good days.

But on my expansive days, when I was open and free, when I stretched out across the class, students gave me the room I needed to teach.

In this way, I learned to walk the classroom aisles.

And this apparently generalized to the aisles at Macy’s and the library and Home Depot and the history museum.

I must be losing this bearing, though. It’s not happening as often. And I’m becoming surprised when someone says, “Excuse me, ma’am.”

But I hope celebrity spotters keep finding Steve. Given my work-a-day, ordinary life, it’s entertaining to hear someone ask my husband if he’s Robert Redford.