Moment Author Calls High School Teacher To Thank Him—27 Years Later

A woman has given her high school teacher a massive thank you for his influence—nearly three decades later.

A video posted to TikTok by Abby Jimenez (@authorabbyjimenez) has gone viral after she shared the moment she called her high school creative-writing teacher to thank him for his guidance. Jimenez, 44, is an author living in Minneapolis. She told Newsweek about the impact her teacher made on her, and what it meant to finally be able to tell him.

In the clip, Jimenez calls her teacher, Mr. House, and tells him about her trajectory from retail management, to cupcake business owner, to New York Times bestselling author.

“The only school that I ever had for writing was your class,” Jimenez said to her former teacher, emotional. “You made me love writing; you were so encouraging.”

Jimenez told Newsweek that she never forgot about Mr. House, but didn’t consider contacting him until she began to write professionally. She had tried to get in touch a few years ago but hit a wall.

“I even called [my old high school] looking for him, but he’d already retired, and I didn’t know his first name to continue the search further,” Jimenez said.

“It wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I was going through my memory boxes before a move that I found a poetry compilation he’d published with some of my poems in it, and his full name was listed in the book.”

Incidentally, it was one of Jimenez’s readers who responded to her call on social media to get in touch with him. He reached out on her behalf and connected the two, which led to the call we see in the video.

‘Full Circle Moment’

Jimenez said she “deeply, deeply disliked high school”—and Mr. House’s class was the sanctuary she needed.

“I was actually close to being expelled at one point because of fights I’d been in from bullying. Creative writing was the only class I liked,” she added. “I kept all of my stories and journals from Tim’s course and, looking at them now through the lens of an adult, I realize how much of a safe space that class really was.

“He never passed judgment on anything I wrote, except to give me encouragement. He made me love writing. He showed me how to flex my creativity and venture beyond what I knew.”

Mr. House supported Jimenez’s writing so much that he asked to keep one of the short stories she wrote in class.

“It was about a woman who dreamed of the future, but she could only see impending tragedies,” she said. “I was so proud of the fact that he kept that. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I wonder if he saw something in me, even then. I definitely didn’t see it in myself.”

Since the call, Jimenez has sent Mr. House personalized copies of all of her books. He is reading them in chronological order. She said the two message every day.

In fact, Mr. House’s wife now teaches the creative writing class at Jimenez’s old high school. The author has plans to speak to her students next month.

“It’s a very full circle moment for me,” Jimenez said. “I hope I inspire them the way I was inspired once in the same room.”