The school district where I work officially hired a couple of new employees on Monday night, as we are wont to do from time to time. And I, as the Technology Director, was asked on Tuesday morning to create the necessary access accounts for those new employees, which I am accustomed to doing every time that we hire new employees, as we are wont to do from time to time.

I was also asked to create identities for these new employees in a system where I hardly ever create new employees. Normally, my response to a request like this would have been something like, “I hardly ever create new employees in that system. You should probably find someone else to handle that part for you.” Strangely enough though, this time, I didn’t do that. Instead, I decided that I was going to figure it out, so that I wouldn’t have to keep diverting these identity-creation tasks to someone else every time they came my way.

What I discovered, in this system where I hardly ever create employee identities, was that there was a bit of a problem at work. You see, in order to create an employee identity in this particular system, you only need a couple of pieces of information; the most critical of these pieces is called a UID, or ‘unique identifier’. The thing about the UID is that it’s made up. It’s a created, alphanumeric string that gets tied to the employee forever. Mine, for example, is MS0111, presumably because I was working in the middle school when we first started using this particular data system, although I can’t tell you what 0111 means; I can’t imagine that I was the 111th middle school staff member fed into that system at the point of its inception.

Anyhow, on Tuesday, when I was trying to think of which UIDs to create for these two new staff members, I was striking out. For example, I tried MS_STAFF_01. Already taken. And so, I tried MS_STAFF_02 and MS_STAFF_03 and MS_STAFF_04, and those were all taken as well. And, of course, I tried some other possibilities as well, but it really only took me a few times of failing at this that I decided to take a different approach. I decided to export every name of every staff member that had ever been created in this system, along with their UIDs, so I could look at the UIDs that have been used in the past, to try to establish some patterns.

This post is a ‘Story to be Told’ post, because my wife told me tonight that she likes it when I write these. However, if I went off on a rant about the mess of UIDs that I found when I did this export, if I went off on a rant about why it shouldn’t be that difficult for a group of people to follow some simple naming conventions every once in a while, if I went off on a rant about entropy as a universal force away from which there is no escape, even when it comes to data –basically, if I start ranting– I am not going to end up generating a story that my wife is going to enjoy reading.

So, instead, I’ll tell you the story of how pleasant this experience turned out to be. Because it did, strangely enough. Sure, all of those things that I just got done talking about were slightly frustrating parts of learning about the innards of this other data system, but what I came away with was a pleasant experience that hit me upside the head out of a clear blue sky.

I got to walk down a huge contact list of people that I’ve known during my career. I looked backed over my time and I saw some of the faces that I’d forgotten along the way. While I value my current coworkers, of course, I have also in the past valued some who’ve come and then gone.

Here’s how that went:

1. I was reminded of the young special education teacher in our high school, who was so tall and somewhat lumbering and goofy looking, who also had a heart of pure gold for students of all different shapes and sizes and ability levels. I’d forgotten how he always inspired me to try to do a better job reaching out to the marginalized students in our hallways.

2. I was reminded of the last Home Ec teacher in our school district, a woman whose sewing classroom is now the Tech Office where I work everyday. She was all at once solid and stern and soft and soulful. She could, in the same young person’s heart, command respect and sow (or is it sew?) love & friendship. It’s been too long since I remembered how honored I should be feeling to be working where she once worked.

3. I was reminded of the behavioral interventionist that we had at the high school, years ago, who was a five-foot-tall sixty-year-old man in cowboy boots and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. He seemed to bring buckets of tough love with him to school every day, for use with the students who needed that stuff from time to time, but he also had a wise outlook on life and a smile that was disarming and warm.

4. I was reminded of the cafeteria cook, whose daughter was one of my very first students during my very first year of teaching. Even after her daughter had graduated from the high school and moved on, this lovely cook was still showing up, day in and day out, doing her best for the district that she loved. She had a laugh that echoed around in that cafeteria; with its often cold and sterile surfaces, that place was once quite blessed by her boisterous bellows.

5. I was reminded of the student that I had as an independent study in creative writing, who then graduated, headed off to college, came back with a teaching degree, got a job in our middle school teaching math, and then became a building principal in a neighboring school district. I was honored to have taught him, honored to have worked alongside him, and I continue to be honored to watch him making an impact even still, following his dreams in education.

I could easily keep doing this. I could easily continue to list out the names of these people with whom I’ve enjoyed a moment or two of contact during my professional career, telling you of their stories, of their bravery and dedication and love. These five aren’t even my five favorites, necessarily; just five from a list of what looks to be dozens, according to the export from the employee data system.

These contacts aren’t the professional contacts I have now, but I think I have come to realize that the ones that I have contact with now might not be the ones with whom I have contact in five years, or ten, or twenty.

So, to the two staff members who’ve joined our rank and file this week, whose names and identities I have plugged into our systems this week, might I say welcome aboard. May the period of time during which we will be in contact have me one day remembering you fondly.

May I also make the most of my opportunity to impact you thusly.