Boy with his head in his hands,

You are going to be a physicist one day. You are going to leave these walls that bound you, move far away, and become a physicist. Don’t listen to what they say; you are brilliant, not stupid. I hear you when you speak; you speak of the particles they use in lasers, ways to solve equations divergently, things that I could never think of. Your peers laugh at you, mock you, and you like to pretend that you are in on the joke.

I am the worst of all, you see. I could stand up for you, plant within you the thought that someone cares. But I don’t. Why is it so hard to give an ounce of help, when you know that the world appears to be constantly turning against one poor boy?

Don’t pay attention to the jerk in the back of the classroom who ridicules you with his unintellectual words. He grabs at the air and finds something meaningless to throw at you, something that makes no sense to throw, like a highlighter. But he knows that it won’t make a difference to you; you are already weak. A highlighter dances amongst you, tinting your muscles that can’t stop twitching and your fingers that can’t stop tapping in a light yellow. It points out all that is wrong with you, and the words that your peers fling at you confirm it. You crumple up inside of yourself, your head in your hands, and wish that you were somebody else.

But listen to me when I say this; for me, I see nothing to mock. All I can see is intelligence, brilliance, something with potential, suffering silently, believing he is stupid. It’s impossible for you to rise above, but just you wait. One day, you will be a physicist, far away from these walls that bound you, and you will be happy. The ones who wound you now will see you one day and shake their heads at their own ignorance. How could they have been so cruel? And look at you now, more successful then they will ever be. Oh, how stupid they had been in the past.

As for me, I will smile to myself, thinking, ‘You go, boy with his head in his hands. I knew you would get here one day.’