Under one of the shadows that surround the sunny April afternoon, above the depths of the

bountiful American lands, Ben met his friends at the wooden school behind the city’s town hall.
For the teenage boys, that Monday was lasting a million years. Their heartbeat was surprisingly
accelerated by the fact that their math teacher, Mrs. Moore, would give them their final exam.
During the whole semester, Ben and his pals were just joking around, but now, they were
swimming in the vast immensity of the ocean with no land in sight.

The alarm rang. The classroom was silent. All of the worried teenagers started to swim in
Olympic pools of sweat and anguish. Once Ben started his exam, he was incredibly surprised.
He thought he would have to know about Pythagorean theorems, logarithms, and algebraic
factors but all the questions regarded bubbles. A product of the consumerist American society
that represents recreation to little kids.

Question number one: what is the diameter of a bubble? Question number two: what taste
does a bubble have? Question number three: what is the shape of a bubble when you have
already “popped” it? Ben started laughing out loud and, impolitely, said to his teacher:

- What kind of joke is this? Where are the cameras? This test is absolutely pointless.

Intrigued, Mrs. Moore did not reply but, instead, started writing a kind of intellectual,
grown-up poem in the board which said:

From dawn to dusk

We try to escape
From life’s conformity
To a haven of common hope.

The superfluous kids were staring at each other; no one really understood what Mrs. Moore
was trying to say. Some of them opened their dictionaries trying to figure the meaning of
“haven” while others did not know what “conformity” was. Finally, words departed Mrs. Moore’s
rosy lips like a military general ready to impose order in the midst of endless chaos:

- Similarly to a bubble, we are smoothly flowing through different paths, aiming to reach
high goals, and brighten someone’s day, but when we least expect, its majesty ends like a
decisive episode that characterizes someone’s final journey.

Enjoy the simple things around, the shiny sun that leads the day, the talented bird that
joyfully sings, and the silver moon that ends one more episode of this great journey called life.
After this class, Ben and his friends stepped out of the door with their hearts full of happiness
and gratitude, in the same way as a little kid would feel in a giant toy store...buying lots of
bubbles!