He had a point there.

“Well, class,” I said quickly, eager to avert a verbal slugfest, “who wants to read first?”

Every week, my students bring something they’ve written to be read aloud to the rest of the class. Most of the time it’s fairly pedestrian. My Grandson’s Bar Mitzvah. My Trip to Disney World. My Grandson’s Bar Mitzvah in Disney World. Every once in a while I get a gem of a memory that makes the whole thing worthwhile. And even on the nights when all I hear about was My Son, The Orthodontist, I get a kick out of these people. After eighty years on the planet, they still have the energy to put their lives down on paper. Not an easy feat, at any age.

“So who wants to read?”

Mr. Goldman’s hand shot up like a piston. A retired carpet salesman, Mr. Goldman was always ready to share the latest chapter of his life’s adventures. Tonight’s was a stirring saga called My Dinner with Jerry Lewis, about the time he wound up sitting next to the comic at a Beverly Hills coffee shop. (Jerry is a big tipper, in case you were wondering.)

He finished to a round of polite applause, and then Mrs. Pechter raised her hand.

“Mrs. Pechter,” I nodded. “What’ve you got?”

She cleared her throat, and read the title of her piece:

“Once Around the Lake, Morris.”

It was one of the gems. A touching story about her husband Morris, and their summer vacations in the Catskill Mountains. Every night after dinner in the hotel dining room, Mrs. Pechter would turn to her husband and ask, “Once around the lake, Morris?” “My pleasure, Rose,” Mr. Pechter would reply. And the two of them would walk around the lake. Holding hands under the stars, they’d talk. About their day. About their kids. About their lives. “I never felt closer to him than on those walks,” she read. “They were the best part of my marriage.” Then one night after just such a walk, they went back to their cabin where Mr. Pechter sat down in an Adirondack chair and died.

“I thought I’d never get over it,” she read, her voice wavering with emotion, “but eventually, I did. Maybe not completely, but enough to keep going.” Two months later, her daughter gave birth to a little boy. And they named him Morris. He grew up, Mrs. Pechter confided, to be her favorite grandson. “A wonderful boy,” she said, “who takes me out for dinner every week. And after dinner, I turn to him and say, ‘Once around the lake, Morris?’ And he says, ‘My pleasure, Grandma.’ Of course, there’s never a lake outside the restaurant. But we walk around the block, holding hands. And wherever my Morris is, I know he’s smiling.”

When she was through, I had tears in my eyes. It was just so damn touching. What a contrast to SueEllen’s blather. Would I ever, I wondered, meet a Morris of my own?