What’s Your Superpower?

One superpower that I am most proud of is my ability to tell if 12-13 year olds REALLY (and I mean REALLY) have to go to the restroom during class.

How it Works:

Whenever a middle schooler asks me if they can use the restroom during class, I do a quick analysis of the student. Typically, I reply with, “You do not have to use the restroom” accompanied by my best Jedi-Mind-Trick stare. Ninety-three percent of the time, this is all I have to do; they sit down with a somewhat defeated look on their face.

The other seven percent of the time, I am met with rebuttal and a “How-could-you-possibly-know-that-I-do-not-have-to-use-the-bathroom” look. When this happens, I have to do another quick analysis and make my call.

I am batting a thousand. I have never had pee on my classroom floor (that I am aware of). My fingers are crossed for the future.

One of my wife’s most notable superpowers (and there are many that are noteworthy)… is also bathroom related.

She can, from any room in the house, determine if a baby has or has not pooped/peed her/himself. I hesitate to call her a Diaper Genie, because that name is obviously taken and trademarked. Shout out to DiaperGenie.

She can tell you the consistency, color, and amount. It’s a skill that consistently amazes me. I used to question her and claim that it was impossible for her to tell which triplet dripped it, but I am a fast learner and I question her no more.

How it Works:

I don’t know.

What I do know is that we all have special powers, some of them more super than others. Each year, I study a novel with my seventh graders… The Watsons go to Birmingham–1963. It’s a pretty cool little piece of historical fiction that follows a family down to Birmingham around the time of the Civil Rights Movement. I’ll leave it at that. (Another one of my superpowers is being able to discuss novels, films, etc. without ruining them for people that have not read/seen them) There’s a passage toward the end of Watsons that explains what I am trying to say here:

Maybe [magic powers] were in the way your father smiled at you even after you’d messed something up real bad. Maybe they were in the way you understood that your mother wasn’t trying to make you the laughing “sock” of the whole school when she’d call you over in front of a bunch of your friends and use spit on her finger to wipe the sleep out of your eyes. Maybe it was magic powers that let you know she was just being Momma. Maybe they were the reason that you really didn’t care when the kids would say, “Yuck! You let your momma slob on you?” and you had to say, “Shut up. That’s my momma, we got the same germs.

Christopher Paul Curtis The Watsons go to Birmingham–1963

Every time I get to read this passage aloud with my students, there are roughly sixty-two misty eyes leaking on my classroom set of well-used novels. I don’t mind; it’s well worth it.

After all…. tears are nowhere close to being as bad as pee.