Nate is beyond great.

I will eventually blog about the success of last night's book signing, but I'm still processing the evening and the fun. Therefore, today's blog is about yesterday's birthday boy... who also happens to be my favorite student of all time.

I met Nate when he was in seventh grade. He was an honorary member of my homeroom. His best friend Scotty (one of my other favorite students of all time) was actually in my homeroom, which meant Nate was frequently in my homeroom as well.

In seventh grade, the boys are squirrelly... and Nate was no exception! But he was also sensitive, intuitive, and wise beyond his years. A Renaissance Man and an old soul: that's what Nate is. Here are three of my favorite young-Nate stories:

1) While in the seventh grade, Nate wanted me to have a boyfriend. I was going through sort of a rough time in my life and wasn't exactly in the market for a boyfriend... but Nate seemed to feel that I very much deserved one. I can remember this one time my friend Biz and I went to a middle school wrestling match and Nate came up to say hi after he wrestled. (We had made a bet regarding that night's score. I ended up losing and the consequence was that I had to get rid of the mug that held pencils on my desk... because that mug sported the name of the school where I taught previously.)

He and Scotty sat with us in the stands for a while, and when they eventually got up to leave, Nate looked at me very seriously and said, "Thanks for coming, Ms. Meeson. Have a good night and get yourself a boyfriend."

"From the mouths of babes," I remember Biz musing.

The next day, I entered my classroom to find a new mug on my desk (a Best Wrestling Coach mug for the school where I currently teach) and a touching note from Nate and some other students. It still hangs on my bulletin board all these years later.

2) When Nate was in high school (I want to say it was his junior year), I was querying agents for Just Whistle. One agent requested a full manuscript and as I'd never experienced that before, I was really hopeful. Obviously, it didn't work out, and when I got the rejection, I passed Nate in the hallway that day and told him the disappointing news. He expressed his condolences and went about his day, but later that night, I received a message from him: "I was thinking... wasn't it J.K. Rowling who got rejected a million times before she got published? You're just the next J.K. Rowling, Ms. Meeson!"

How he knew that I was upset about the rejection at that very moment, I will never know. He's just an insanely intuitive person.

3) At one point in his high school career, Nate and I did an art swap. I obviously enjoy cutting and tearing paper; Nate's good at painting. We've always had a fruit connection (I'm not really sure why; I'll have to ask him if he remembers the story behind that one) and so we did a fruit art swap. I made him a picture of himself in a wrestling singlet, clobbering a giant strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry, I believe. Nate painted a pomegranate for me. It has since been framed and now hangs in my living room.

Nate is still every bit as intuitive as he's always been. I mean, I wrote a blog back in August (on the 30th, I believe it was) entitled "Circle of Friends." I'd had a really shitty past twenty-four hours and wasn't feeling especially upbeat. My other other mother Theresa, who is insanely intuitive as well, called at the same time there was a knock at my front door. I remember ignoring the call in order to answer the door, half-expecting Theresa to be the one standing there on the porch. But it was Nate! He was just riding around town on his new motorcycle and decided to swing by. We watched some Jeopardy and talked about school and then he was on his way... and even though I never once mentioned that my day hadn't been great, he seemed to have sensed it and shown up.

Nate is now my coworker and dear friend and I am so fortunate that he's remained such a constant in my life. This year, as per tradition, I gifted him with an assortment of fruit for his birthday. One of my homeroom students ran it upstairs to him and I received this text later that morning:

Just look at that respectable punctuation and capitalization! It's icing on the cake; he is such a cool person.

And speaking of cake... Nate, if you're reading this, I hope you enjoyed a cheesecake on your birthday. You deserve it!