It was the 1973-74 school year and I was just another kid in Mrs. Runk's fourth grade class at Allen East Elementary School in LaFayette (don't want to miss that capital "F"), Ohio.

She arranged a field trip for us. Field trips happened maybe 3 - 4 times a year back then and they were always a real highlight of the year. I don't know that they happen so often in school anymore.

She arranged a field trip for us to her husband's business, CSS Publishing in Lima, Ohio. I do not remember a whole lot about what we saw there. But I do remember her husband talking to us and encouraging us to write and journal. And I remember what he gave each of us -- a small glue-bound booklet of blank ivory-colored cardstock for us to write and journal in.

After a good period of waiting and deliberation, I used my booklet for several years to write about the Cincinnati Reds. This was during the height of the Big Red Machine era and I followed all of the players very closely. I knew all of their stats and studied them after each game. Bench, Morgan, Rose, Concepcion, Foster, Nolan, Gullett, Geronimo, Billingham, Perez. I knew them all very well and I also kept a Cincinnati Reds scrapbook of newspaper clippings.

I still have that booklet and the scrapbook someplace though I suspect the glue in the booklet has cracked and the pages have separated.

But I think back occasionally to CSS Publishing and Mr. Wesley Runk .... and the lifelong impact he had on this snot-nosed fourth grader by giving me that little booklet and starting me on lifetime of enjoying playing with words.

I recently sent him an email just to let him know that he made an impact that day over 30 years ago. Remembering that makes me more sensitive to the impact, good or bad, that I can choose to have on others each day of my life.