By Charles Ganong

Recently I was a substitute teacher in the Highline School District.

As luck, fate or karma would have it, I was often called to work at the Evergreen High campus, my alma mater. Which is weird, actually, because for the last 35 years I’ve had this recurring dream that, due to bureaucratic bungling, my whole class has to go back and repeat our entire senior year—no matter that we are now frumpy, middle-aged grown-ups with families, mortgages and lives of our own.

Luckily, that particular dream—or nightmare—has yet to come true. But my long-lost goal of becoming a teacher—even though of the part-time, fill-in variety—was realized for a short time, enriching my life considerably.

When I first started substitute teaching, I figured that it was I who had much to offer my lucky students: troves of wit, wisdom and all the other admirable traits bestowed by age, experience and raw survival. But something happened on my last day at Evergreen that showed me that I was the one who had much to learn from my students:

There were a few minutes left at the end of the day, so I let the students play a game. They pushed some desks together, plopped down around them and all laid their hands, palms down, on the makeshift table. Each player slid his or her arm to the left or right, over or under his neighbor’s, creating an interlocking circle of arms and hands.

The goal of the game is to lift one’s own hand just at the right moment, and in the proper sequence. Easier said than done, when two strange hands are lying where yours ought to be. Two false moves and you’re out.

Anyway, as the hands flipped up and down in a mad whirl around the table, smiles blossomed like bright bouquets and laughter echoed off the walls, I couldn’t help but think: the United Nation’s got nothing on these kids. Here were Black, White, Asian, Latino, Samoan, Native American, Muslim, Christian, Jew—all creating and sharing a spontaneous outpouring of friendship and joy, each one color-blind to all but the golden light of peace and human harmony.

Awed, honored—almost overcome—I just took it all in, savoring the moment, thinking: if this isn’t a vision of heaven on earth, it is, at the very least, a living portrait of human perfection in the here and now.

That scene will remain with me always: the radiant faces, streaming joy, billowing laughter, the heady glow of a sublime moment, the delightful variety and stunning depth and shades of the human form, face and, most of all, those hands.

Although most of what I learned as a student at Evergreen 40 years ago has been lost, forgotten or rendered obsolete, I will always remember the lesson I learned as a teacher at my old school that day: In a world too often shackled by the chains of intolerance, bigotry and old hatreds, love—especially that soaring freely from young hearts—always wins.

Hands down.