Dear Teacher with the Notes,
She leaves them little notes, here and there. She sprinkles them around like confetti on the top of a cupcake, but to her, they are more than decorations. They are an unspoken language, the way she communicates with teenagers who have reputations to uphold and are way too cool to be vulnerable with their nerdy, high school English teacher.
It’s her way of noticing them without anyone else noticing. On a sticky note in pink, she tells Lily that her contributions in the discussion were among the best she's ever heard. Jason’s contributions were not so great. She is not a liar. So on a yellow sticky note, she tells him she likes his shirt, and that is the truth. It says, “Ain’t feeling it today.”
On birthdays, she hands each student a card with a unique statement like, “I know a unicorn is your favorite animal. I would have gotten you one, but the horn would not fit in the card. There’s also a no animal policy at school. Happy Birthday anyway, my one-of-a-kind student.”
She thinks these notes don’t really matter until she realizes how much they really do.
When she told them about the custodian Hilda being in the hospital with a mass in her abdomen, they all wanted their chance to write little notes of their own.
So, she broke out the crayons and markers while they searched Google for meaningful quotes about suffering.
As they worked diligently and quietly on their masterpieces, she marveled at their empathy and was reminded that despite all the friction in the world, there is hope as long as teenage boys wearing “Ain’t feeling it today,” t-shirts "feel it" deeply enough to write a kind note to Hilda, the school custodian who is struggling right now.
It is true I have never seen a unicorn in real life, but then again, maybe I have, and I just didn’t know it.
Could it be that unicorns are actually one-of-a- kind teenagers in disguise?
-CDB