Queen Esther & the Second Graders of Doom. Allie Pleiter

Essie knew he would. Peter, it seemed, was “yullergic” to just about everything. Some days all Peter could add to a conversation was a list of relevant items to which he was allergic. On those days he would sigh, speak without enthusiasm and generally look as if the entire world was gunning for his immune system. How he reconciled such an outlook with his love of bugs and other slimy creatures, she couldn’t really say. An image of Peter, foraging under a rock with latex gloves on, flashed uninvited in her brain. Focus, Essie, focus.

      “Okay,” she continued, “what he ate isn’t really the point here. The point is that he gave what he had for Jesus to use, even though it didn’t seem like much at the time. “David,” Essie said, turning to Cece’s son in an attempt to get things on the right track, “do you think five loaves and two fishes is enough to feed thousands of people?”

      David scrunched up his forehead in thought. “You’d have to break it into really tiny pieces.”

      Essie had to laugh at that one. “Even then, what that boy had just wasn’t enough to go around. Remember, it said that there were baskets of leftovers even after everyone had eaten. That’s why it was a miracle. Jesus took that food and made it able to do something very special. Something only God could make happen.” She looked around the room, trying to catch each boy’s eyes. “Sometimes the stuff we have to do in life feels like more than we can handle. Like we don’t have what it will take to do what needs to be done. Does anyone have an example?”

      Justin’s arm shot in the air. “My baby sister. Sometimes she cries so much, I think I’m gonna explode.”

      Essie thought about Josh’s most recent teething episode and could only nod in sympathy. “Babies are a handful, aren’t they?”

      “I heard Mom telling Dad she thought she’d never, ever get to sleep again. When I told Dad we ought to make baby Megan sleep in the garage, he told me not to say that in front of Mom, but he was smiling when he said it, so I know he thinks we oughta try it.”

      Essie could only imagine.

      “My dad has a new job this month, and it’s making him really nervous,” offered Steven Bendenfogle. “He gets grumpy a lot. And sometimes he doesn’t come home till way after my bedtime. And he brings home lots of homework, besides. I think he feels like it’s too hard.”

      “New jobs feel too hard lots of times. You could really help cheer him up, Steven.”

      “I don’t know.” Steven shook his head. “He’s really grumpy some nights.”

      “Well, now you’ve got something that feels too hard now, too, don’t you? It feels like it may be too hard to cheer up someone who’s really grumpy, doesn’t it? That’ll take Jesus’ help, too.”

      Steven thought about that for a while, but then nodded.

      “It’d be too hard,” said Stanton loudly, “to beat Jesus in a jumping contest, ’cuz He’s God and He’s got superpowers and stuff. He’d beat you at anything!”

      Well now, superpower was an odd definition of deity, but it must have rung true to the average eight-year-old, because the other boys all immediately agreed. Instantly, boys began shouting examples such as “I bet He could spit a watermelon seed around the world,” or “He could kick a soccer ball through a brick wall,” and even several instances of X-ray vision.

      “Or,” interjected Essie in a voice loud enough to cut through the din, “transform one little boy’s lunch into enough food to feed thousands of hungry people.”

      Everyone had to think about that for a moment. Then, very quietly, Stanton said, “Yeah. Cool.”

      Was it okay to think of Jesus’ miracles as superpowers? She hoped God didn’t mind a little creativity, because clearly Jesus just went up a couple of notches in the “cool” department for a few of these boys. And that was the whole point, wasn’t it?

      “Superpowers aren’t real,” she said, because she felt it ought to be said. “But Jesus, and the things He can do with us when we believe in Him, those are real. And yeah, Stanton, they are cool. The older you get, the more you believe, the cooler it gets.” Nods and a few amazed faces.

      Zing. It sunk in. Score one for the crazy mom from New Jersey.

      And the very cool God who brought her here.

      As she put away the workbooks after class, Essie pondered how overwhelmed she had felt about this “Doom Room” class. Hadn’t she felt like it was way too much to handle?

      Suddenly, it wasn’t exactly clear who was teaching whom.

      Cool.

      Oh, it was cool all right, right up until Mark-o’s phone call that evening.

      “Congratulations, Essie, you made it four whole weeks before the first call. That may be a record.”

      Essie put down the stain stick she was using to try and get the Baby Tylenol stains out of a batch of Josh’s onesies. “What?”

      “I was just congratulating you on going a full four weeks before some parent found something to gripe about it. That’s a pretty neat trick in my book.”

      Essie sunk to the couch, deflated even before she heard the details. “Yippee. What is it?”

      “Do you want the pastor version, or the brother version?”

      Essie found the sheer fact that he had versions to be mildly annoying. “Which one’s more amusing? I gather this isn’t exactly good news.”

      “Well, I admit to some level of bias, but I think the brother version has a bit more humor to it.”

      “Ooo, I can hardly wait. Okay, let’s hear it.”

      “Steven Bendenfogle’s mom is concerned that her son now accredits our Lord and Savior with the powers of X-ray vision.” He was laughing when he said it.

      “That’s the brother version? And no, I did not say that Jesus has X-ray vision. As a matter of fact, I went out of my way to point out just the opposite.”

      “I believe you, relax. How did the subject of X-ray vision come up, anyhow?”

      Essie wanted to hold her head in her hands. Here she’d been spending the afternoon in a glowing joy about how the kids had really grasped the truth of miracles, and it was all coming undone in the space of one disgruntled mother’s phone call. “We were talking about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. They were really getting into it—you know, trying to figure out how that little bit of food fed all those people. We talked about God’s power, and what miracles are. They saw Jesus’ power as a sort of superpower. I think that’s a pretty good grasp for kids of that age. Oh, Mark-o, you should have seen their faces. They began to think of Jesus as cool. As someone to help them when they felt overwhelmed. It was great. And now this. I could just scream.”

      “Look, Essie, don’t get worked up about this. You need to remember that we’re working on thirdhand information here, with one of those hands being eight years old. Things are bound to get twisted. You can’t let it get to you.”

      “Then why am I suddenly envisioning ‘This session may be recorded for quality control purposes’? She doesn’t really think I told them Jesus has X-ray vision, does she? It’s…she can’t…”

      “It’s no big deal. Actually, I think it’s rather funny.”

      “You would, but…”

      “What it does tell me, is that you have these kids thinking. Engaged. Working through ideas in their own terms. Surely the educator in you can see what a good thing that is. I’d much rather have this than a group of kids who can recite the books of the Bible in bored voices.”

      “But…”

      “It’s an imperfect system. We’re imperfect teachers. You’re not going to get perfect scores on this, Essie, ever. You’re going to miss the target lots