I just got my lucky break.
Actors wait tables in Hollywood for years, hoping for their lucky break.
Mine happened yesterday.
I was volunteering in my son’s 3rd-grade classroom, putting my MBA to work by cutting out strips of paper. The students had written compliments to each other on the paper (“I compliment you on your epic awesomeness”) for Valentine’s Day.
The teacher was reading aloud from a book but stopped to figure out how to bind the strips of compliments together.
“Who wants to read aloud?” she asked the fidgety group of students gathered before her on the rug.
“I do!” I exclaimed. (I don’t think I shouted it.)
There was a moment when I hesitated, when I was shy, when I didn’t want to intrude on the class. I wonder where else that moment’s hesitation shows up, where else it stops the lucky break.
But I love to read aloud. I’m even semi-pro: I “teach” a Powerful Schools class where I read the How to Train Your Dragon series to kindergartners and first graders at my daughter’s school.
I sat down in the teacher’s chair.
“I hope I don’t embarrass G too much,” I said, laughing at my son. That caused a commotion with him scooting under a desk, pursued by noisy classmates.
I began to read. Something about dangerous fruit that makes the main character fart.
I have skills. Those kids were rapt. Some of the boys’ mouths were open.
“This isn’t too scary for you, is it?” I asked them. “You aren’t going to get nightmares, are you?”
The kids reassured me they were fine.
“You’re going to read aloud every Thursday morning,” the teacher said.
That was my lucky break — I’ve been discovered!