“People will forget what you say, forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This is one of the quotes my mom has always preached. In her eyes, being nice to everyone, no matter what, was maybe even more important than making good grades or Varsity Cheerleading. She was always more concerned about the way we treated others, especially those that weren’t in our close friend groups.

Each day after school we’d all talk about our days, rambling on and on about how we needed to get poster boards for this and brand new (the latest!) crayola markers for that. Test next week. Paper due yesterday. Red beans and rice were okay. And oh, so and so hurt my feelings today. And on and on. And there mom is, our official chauffeur, listening to our chatter and begging (with endless questions of course!) for more. We would all roll our eyes and sigh when we didn’t feel like answering questions, but I think we secretly liked it. I think it felt good (deep down) that she cared. And that she wanted to know about our day, the test, and whatever else.

Although she preached many-a-lesson on those car rides, I distinctively remember one pertaining to how we treated other people. She emphasized time and time again how important it was to be kind to everyone. And would say in a stern yet caring voice that people will forget what you say, forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And it stuck with me.

I can still see her saying it right now from the driver seat as if middle school were yesterday, “wazzzzzzup” was the cool thing to say, and “calling” a “captain seat” was my #1 mission come 2:45 PM M-F. From the back seat, I remember the typical view – lime green carpool number on the dash, McDonalds Diet Coke in her freshly-manicured-OPI-Red-hand, and Jackie-O sunglasses in the rear view mirror. Those were the days! Gotta love carpool.

Thank you mom for teaching me such a valuable life lesson. I hope I was (or all of us for that matter) were able to make people feel as good as you make everyone around you feel.