If you had asked me in high school what my favorite subject was, I would’ve answered “math.” Hands down. Not even a question. That’s how good my math teacher was. He tricked me. Today I don’t like math. Today my kids are bringing home long division problems and I get a headache. What happened?

What happened was that I had Mr. Martin for two years of algebra and pre-calculus in high school and the bastard made me think I liked math. I got to college and discovered I hated math. Lesson one: a great teacher can get you to love anything. Had Mr. Martin taught “Piling Up Rocks,” I would’ve enthusiastically majored in rock stacking.

Flash forward ten years to my high school reunion. Of course I was looking forward to seeing what became of folks like Kevin Kohler – who was into muscle cars, Zildjian cymbals, and could vibrate his eyes back and forth so fast they blurred; and Vince Delorca – who taught me how to make a mod “fist bong” to smoke clove cigarettes; but I was also really hoping to run into Mr. Martin. I had something in particular I wanted to tell him. But he was a no-show, as were most teachers. Like any high school reunion, this one was for the students, not the teachers. It was about finding out turned out rich, who turned out bald, and who turned out fat. (For the record, Vince and Kevin were both thin, both had their hair and both appeared not to be living out of their cars).

Back in high school, Mr. Martin would always make the final question of his exams a joke. Something like, “43x – 16y = the amount of Playboy magazines owned by Vince Delorca. True or false?” (okay, I made that one up: in reality, Mr. Martin was way too classy to actually embarrass Delorca or anyone else personally, but his tests were hard, and I appreciated the gesture). In truth, I only remember one of his silly jokes, and it haunted me for ten years. At the end of one exam Mr. Martin wrote, “Why would a man with a PhD in math work at a high school where he’s making one fifth of what he could be making as an analyst for IBM?”

This just ate at me. At the time I thought, “huh, weird, whatever.” But as I got older and marginally less self centered, it really bothered me. Was this Mr. Martin’s one howl of honesty in the years I had known him? Was he really that bitter? Did he think his work didn’t matter? Did he feel he had chosen the wrong life path?

So ten years later, after he didn’t show up at the reunion, I tracked him down. Got his phone number from the administration. I left him a message leaving my full name and graduation date, assuming he wouldn’t remember me after so many years and so many students. He called back within a day, thrilled that I had called. He remembered me clearly. I told Mr. Martin how flattered I was. He told me to call him “Alan.” After catching up on our lives, I came to the point. I told him that after 12 years of elementary, middle and high school, and 5 more years of college (hey, I hear 5 is on the low side these days, so shut up), he was the best teacher I ever had. Period.

And the tone he set in that class – he didn’t have to worry about spitwads, kids cutting class, or any of that normal stuff. And he didn’t have to resort to threats of JUG (Jurisidiction Under God – this was a Jesuit high school, and for detention aka JUG, we had to stay after school and write a 1000 word essay about why we had to stay after school, and number each word) or yell or anything else. He was above it all. White gloves. He projected such faith in us, such enthusiasm for the subject matter, that we simply had no choice but to rise to the occasion.

He was, of course, very happy to hear how I felt about him. And I brought up the joke question that always haunted me. Well, I’m happy to report it was just a joke. He loves teaching and still does. He was probably just short some money to fix his transmission the day he was writing up that test.

The second lesson I learned, the one that mattered most, was about the choice to make that phone call. Lesson two: don’t be stingy with compliments. It made Mr. Martin’s day to hear that one of his old students regarded him as the best teacher he ever had. I can be a bit tough with compliments. Thinking about it now, the only time I compliment my staff, for instance, is when I give them their Christmas gifts, once a year. And you can be sure I’ll let my kids know when I’m disappointed in them, but I don’t always tell them when I’m thrilled with them. Life is short, we’re a social animal, and letting people know how happy you are with them, or what a difference they’ve made in your life, is never in poor taste.

Just play a morbid little cocktail game: if you found out tomorrow that someone suddenly died who you had been meaning to say something nice to, would you shrug, or would you feel like crap? So for goodness sake, call someone and tell them what they mean to you. Trust me: once you get past the awkwardness of being kind and sincere, and believe me – no one is less comfortable with sincerity than me – you – and more importantly – they, will love it.