A child’s story…

A little girl in second grade underwent chemotherapy for leukemia. When she returned to school, she wore a scarf to hide the fact that she had lost all her hair. But some of the children pulled it off, and in their nervousness laughed and made fun of her. The little girl was mortified and that afternoon begged her mother not to make her go back to school. Her mother tried to encourage her, saying, “The other children will get used to it, and anyway your hair will grow in again soon.

The next morning, when their teacher walked into class all the children were sitting in their seats, some still tittering about the girl who had no hair, while she shrank into her chair.

“Good morning.children,” the teacher said, smiling warmly in her familiar way of greeting them. She took off her coat and scarf. Her head was completely shaved.

After that, a rash of children begged their parents to let them cut their hair. And when a child came to class with short hair, newly bobbed, all the children laughed merrily – not out of fear – but out of the joy of the game. And everybody’s hair grew back at the same time. (from “The Art of Possibility” by Rosamund Stone Zander)

I love that the teacher intervened on the divisions occurring in her classroom by reframing the meaning of the child’s strange appearance, releasing the little girl from her identity as different and scary.

The teacher presented baldness as possibility – a fashion statement, an act of choice, a game to play, an opportunity for solidarity and connection. No one was made wrong. There was nothing to fix.

And maybe this story is just one of the reasons I like to read so much!