The "coolest guy ever"?

This morning I was browsing around the expansive territory of that place that is no place, the world wide web. As I did so I stumbled upon something that caught me quite by surprise: a web site of one of the students who attends the high school at which I teach.

I was not struck by anything that I found offensive on his site or any such thing. Rather, what I found that caught my attention completely unawares was a comment about me. In the typically sloppy, lazy, and disrespectful fashion of the day, he writes without proper capitalization, punction, and spelling. He plainly asserts that:

"prolly the coolest guy ever is Father Darin (i think some of you will agree with me on this)".

Which, translated into proper English grammar and spelling, means, "Probably the coolest guy ever is Father Daren (I think some of you will agree with me on this)".

I find myself quite perplexed and humbled by his comment because, to the best of my memory (which, is, admittedly, failing more every day) I have only had a couple of very brief encounters with this young man. And, the only one individually that I recall was when he happened to see me in the mall. He kindly greeted me by title and name and I greeted him back and we both went about our business. What is more, he is not a Catholic, although he is a Christian and a sincere believer from what I can see.

I do not know why a young man in high school would consider me the "coolest guy ever." I could, I suppose, try to find out the reasons why he makes this bold and false claim (clearly I am not any cooler than, say, St. Francis of Assisi or King Arthur), but instead I shall simply humbly accept it with gratitude to the Lord God who continues to work wonders in and through his people.

May the Lord bless this young man who does not even know that I have been to his web site.