I used to teach at a private high school in New England, and in one of my classes, I had a student named Liza.
On the first day of class, when I called her name, I pronounced it Lisa, and she politely corrected me. It was Liza, she said. The next day it happened again. "Lisa?" I called. "Liza," she corrected, "with a Z."
I apologized. But despite the simplicity of the name, the mistake made that first day seemed to have a grip on some irrational part of my brain, and for weeks I got it wrong, at least initially, calling her Lisa, them immediately correcting myself.
The class began to call her Lisa/Liza, but despite the good natured vibes to the joke, I worried that she would think I was deliberately mocking her. I didn't understand it. How hard was it to remember the name Liza? But it had nothing to do with memory or knowledge. The mistake had become unconscious, unchangeable, mysteriously stuck in some delinquent neuron that refused to let it go.
I came to dread the calling of the roll. So it continued with Lisa/Liza until one day I saw her walking alone on campus and caught up with her. "Lisa," I said, then stopped, distressed and beyond apology.
But Liza just flung her arms around me in a hug. "Ms. B," she said, "it doesn't matter. Really. It's fine. You can call me Lisa. Don't worry about it."
From that moment on, I never got her name wrong again. Not once. It was as if the girl's forgiveness had released me from some enchantment, like in a fairy tale. In the annals of the world's giant wrongs, this is a small story, and a minor miracle at best. But I never forgot it, and the generosity at its heart has informed many moments since.
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