Curls and Crunchy Leaves

Lessons from substitute teaching:)

There’s a sweet little curly-haired kid at school, Opal is her name, who took to explaining her superpowers at 1:30 recess over pumpkin-colored carpets of crunchy leaf skeletons. She hasn’t quite nailed down the “R” sound, which made the whole exchange eight times more endearing. “Wo-zee, I have Supa SITE and Supa SPEED.” And proceeded to run a medium-slow lap to the sweetgum in the far righthand corner of the yard. I thought about coining that phrase as my own.  “Supersight” sounded right on. But I contemplated whether stealing linguistic innovations from a 5-year-old is the same as stealing candy from a baby. And thought better of it. But then again, here I am.

I love how kids just believe in their superpowers. Know them to be true. Like they never lost them. Never had any need to question them. But isn’t that what the world does to us? Makes us second guess our blood, our fangs, our nature, our supersight and superspeed and supersouls? Until we don’t know if they were ever really ours to begin with? I hope that’s not the case for these innocents. These caped, beanie’d and gloved superheroes in my midst, scattered like paintballs across a sloped expanse of possibility. But my innards know the truth. The big wisdom in little packages will be stolen and marred one day. The life lived in the middle is reclaiming it. Supersite and superspeed. Remembering it's always been ours. It was never lost. Just covered up with the scratchy wool blankets and stiffened silks of culture and pressure and stress and doubt.

Should I tell them? Warn them? Or close my eyes and listen. To the laughter frothing at the tails of joy. The absurdity. The insanity of it all. Should I tell them? No.

Not today.