I was walking to the classroom building when I saw her. A tiny girl with a pink coat and a swingy ponytail, and concern all over her face.
She was walking away from the building, slowly. I said hello. She paused and kind of half-waved.
She walked toward the other classroom building, then stopped. She turned around. I reached the doorway. She came up to me. I leaned down. Way down.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
“yes.” Her voice wasn’t even loud enough for capitalization.
“You can tell me anything and I’ll help.”
“There...might be...a...a...BUG...in-the-bathroom.”
Oh. A bug.
For the record, I appreciate all bugs. Their role in the environment, their contribution to the circle of life and all that. But mostly, unless it’s a moth or a lightning bug, I’m good with admiring them from afar. Like, afar afar.
But, I had pledged to help.
I went into the girls’ bathroom. There, a few feet in front of me, in front of the sinks.
A brown thing. On the floor. She was right. It looked like a bug. A specific kind of bug. A fast kind of bug that you don’t want inside.
I took a few steps. Oh, thank heavens. It was a smooshed acorn. Right color, right size, wrong lifeform.
I picked it up with a paper towel, feeling very relieved.
I went out to show it to her.
So instead of confronting a bug, we had a short talk about acorns and seeds. She wanted to see it up close, touch it, see what’s inside. We looked at its white middle and brown shell.
We agreed it’s way better to find an acorn instead of a bug in the bathroom. I think that’s a statement every American can agree with. At least I hope so.
That little girl has been on my mind. Maybe it’s this time of extreme transition we’re dealing with as a country. We don’t quite know what we’re looking at, but our initial instinct is to be wary.
Perhaps it’s the enormous disconnect between the picture of a broken, defeated America — “American carnage” — laid out by the new president in his inauguration speech, and a curious child starting out in life, learning that not everything she sees is a threat.
The new president’s belief that America can survive only if we turn exclusively inward and shut out the rest of the world denies the reality so many kids know to be true because they live in communities, like Tucson, filled with people of many nationalities, languages, colors, family structures, beliefs. They see it every day at recess.
This is a difficult time for a lot folks. The isolationist, nationalist and pessimistic vision of a beat-up America that has just moved into the White House doesn’t square with the vision held by people who see the same problems but whose instinct is to reach toward others to work together.
I’m going to think of that tiny girl as a way to get through these coming days, months, years. This child faced a problem: What do you do when there might be a ginormous, scary bug in the school bathroom?
She figured out the problem. She took action. She asked for help. She confronted her fear. She was ready to deal with it. And when it turned out to be a non-bug, she got curious and learned about something new. She didn’t back down, and she’s ready for the next discovery.
Obviously, the country is facing much more definitive and existential challenges than a bug in the bathroom. The metaphor can only stretch so far.
But sometimes, even when you’re not looking for it, kids really are our best teachers.
