Q: If you could have any super power, what would it be?
A: I want the power to always say the right thing at the right time. Flight and super-strength are great, but I teach high school. I get a lot of questions from kids about life that I just can’t answer. Among all the discussion raging about curriculum and distance learning and a million other things, you never really hear anyone talk about how to help the students with what they’re going through. These are kids. Actual human beings. They have good days and bad days and terrible days, and they’re still learning how to cope with it. As adults, we’ve forgotten what it means to be young and learning to face problems and pain. We tend to write their problems off as minor teenage problems that they’ll get over, but they’re dealing with so much more than we realize, and much of it on an adult level they shouldn’t have to experience yet.
We lost a member of our senior class this year. I didn’t have an answer to “Why did this happen?” or “How do I deal with this?” because there are no good answers. How am I supposed to know what to say to them when I still call my parents with the same questions? How am I supposed to help them when I don’t understand, don’t have the slightest idea of what to say to such pain? More than anything, I wish I had the power to always say the right words at the right time.
Joshua Hagy’s story “The Knight Who Carried a Sword in His Heart”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 13 January 2023.
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