My 5th-grade teacher, Mr. Kreush, profoundly impacted my future when he challenged us to write a short story each week to read aloud to the class. The first week, I wrote a Hardy Boys-esque mystery with a cliffhanger I planned to resolve the following week. When I read it aloud, my 10-year-old colleagues were too preoccupied etching their names in their desks to pay attention.

I didn’t want to write again. But the class required it, so I did.

The second week, I wrote a comedy piece roping in my friends as characters, cram-packed with every juvenile joke my prepubescent brain could come up with. And the intended effect worked! The class listened, they laughed, they enjoyed.

It was from that moment on I learned that I wanted to be a storyteller and I liked making people laugh. Thank you Mr. Kreush for the B-.