Super powers

Mark and his friends were quizzing each other on which super power they'd choose if they could have just one.

Mark's answer was immediate. "Invisibility!" he shouted.

But Sean quickly shot him down. "No, you can't do anything with invisibility," he said. "You're just...invisible."

Josh answered next, saying he wanted intangibility. I stared at him just as blankly as the kids did, until he explained, "I want to be intangible and just float through things." He moved his hand like an ocean wave cutting through the air. (And I realized this room of 11-years-olds is smarter than I am!)

I recognized Sean's answer, though, because I'd been helping Mark study for his science test. Sean had studied, too, because he said, "I want the power of conduction, because then I'd be PURE HEAT!"

Dan couldn't decide whether he wanted to fly or run in super speed, but finally settled on flying. This brought on another furious debate of whether flying was really a super power or not. Half the group argued it was, while the other half insisted that the super power was really transportation as a whole, and not just one mode of it.

"Flying isn't a super power," Sean said. "You just need a cape to fly."

"Super speed is way better," Josh reasoned, "because you can get anywhere you want immediately."

"No way," Mark argued. "Flying is better, because you can't run over the oceans."

"Yeah, but you could if you were super fast," Sean said. His comment was then refuted by the observation that only Jesus could walk on water, and he didn't need super speed to do it.

I was fascinated by it all. I loved the reasoning behind all their comments, and I loved watching the wheels turn as they thought about their rebuttals, and formed their opinions. I realized that maybe Mark wasn't the only kid in the room destined to become a lawyer. Better yet, I finally saw that all his back talk and argumentative nature might actually serve him well someday--maybe he'll work for a prestigious think tank, or be a professor at some elite college. Heck, maybe he'll even use that big brain to find the cure to diabetes.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Because these kids are big thinkers, so I will be, too. I'm hoping that when they grow up, they'll use their (super) powers for good.