Everyone in the world is a bird.

People flit in and out of trees, usually staying only a little while on a branch or a nest; occasionally lingering for a period of time to leave a slight indentation in the wood of some oak or birch tree that they’re fond of. But then, that hole is smoothed away by time and harsh conditions, sometimes in a mere day or two.

All that time spent on that slight indentation, only to have it erased.

So you could say that all of their hard work was done in vain; that it was pointless to put so much effort and time into just a tiny notch in the wood. Because that’s all that the memory of them will be in somebody’s life when they’re gone. It’s true. Say that a tree’s name was Somebody. Somebody will meet plenty of birds in his life, countless birds. One bird is only one of them, one of them in the crowd, the crowd of birds whose names Somebody has forgotten over time. And they become just someone that flew into Somebody’s life and out. Just like that.

But sometimes, that’s not true.

Like, for instance, see that kindergartener over there? The blond one with the blue-grey eyes, clutching his Power Rangers lunch box, running towards his friends? His name is Tommy Atkinson.

Well, you see Tommy running, and running, and running towards his friends. And then he stumbles. And trips. And his knee is scraped, and blood is beginning to seep out of it. Tommy starts to cry, but none of his friends notice. He starts crying even louder. And he cries even more, and more, and more. And he wonders if anybody cares, if anybody is going to help him with his scrape. Because it hurts. It hurts this much.

And then, oh, a teacher spots Tommy! She rushes over to him and looks at the scrape. You can see that she feels genuinely sorry for little Tommy as she pats him gently on the back. She smiles at Tommy and lifts him up in her arms. She carries him all the way to the nurse’s office, and then gets out a disinfectant spray and a band-aid. Tommy’s cries have reduced to sniffles by this point, but as soon as the teacher lifts up the bottle of disinfectant, he begins bawling again.

“Shh,” the teacher murmurs, putting a hand on Tommy’s shoulder . “Tommy, Power Rangers are brave, aren’t they?”

Tommy nods with tears glistening in his eyes.

“Well, then, you want to be brave like them, don’t you?”

Tommy nods again.

“Well, if you want to be brave like a Power Ranger, you can’t cry, even when it hurts. Because Power Rangers are strong.”
“What if you put on too much and it really really hurts? Hurts this much?” Tommy stretches his arms to show the teacher how much it really really hurts.

The teacher smiles warmly. “Okay, Tommy, how about this? You can use the disinfectant spray. That way I won’t spray too much. And I’ll give you a lollipop too.”

Tommy thinks about it for a minute. He smiles and nods. “I’m gonna be brave like a Power Ranger!” he announces proudly.

So the teacher shows Tommy how to spray the disinfectant, and Tommy sheds not a tear as he does it, all by himself. And then, after the teacher sticks on a blue band-aid with yellow smiley faces on his knee, Tommy wipes his eyes quickly and starts to lick his lemon-flavored lollipop.

And that little episode in Tommy’s life, which only took about five minutes, changed Tommy for the rest of his life.

When Tommy returned home that day, he stubbed his toe on the door. Instead of wailing until his mother fixed the injured toe up, he tried not to cry and got the first-aid kit from his mother’s room. He sprayed disinfectant spray like he had that morning and stuck a band-aid on it. His mother laughed about it when he told her what he had done. She told him that he didn’t need disinfectant spray for a stubbed toe. And that sparked Tommy’s curiosity. What did you do for stubbed toes? And what about paper cuts?

Then, Tommy will become interested in how people get all fixed up, and how disinfectant spray helps you, and why people needed blue band-aids with yellow smiley faces on them.

That led to Tommy becoming a pediatrician. A good pediatrician. And whenever a child was afraid of disinfectant spray, he told them to spray it, stuck a band-aid with a blue smiley face on it, and then gave them a lollipop afterwards.

Do you see how the teacher left a mark on Tommy? On his bark, his trunk, his branches? And it stayed there. It affected his life, helped him become the person he is now.

And perhaps that teacher’s name will have been forgotten by Tommy over the years, erased by time. Or maybe someday, at the market he’ll see someone bump into a lady that looks like his old kindergarten teacher, the one that showed him how to be brave like a Power Ranger, and he’ll help her up and pick up her apples and celery sticks and her toothpaste that brightens teeth, and then she’ll ask him what his name is so she can thank him. And he’ll reply, “Thomas Atkinson, ma’am.”

And the lady will ask, “Thomas? By any chance, did you go to Birchwood Elementary school?” And Tommy will reply yes.

Then the lady will say, “Do you remember your kindergarten teacher?”

Tommy will smile, and say, “Yes, I do. She was a great teacher. She taught me how to be brave…like a Power Ranger.”

And the two will chuckle, and then Tommy will say, “She was the one that helped me become a pediatrician…well, good luck with your shopping, have a great day.” And he’ll leave. He'll never realize what happened.

But the teacher, she’ll realize that she is a bird. Figuratively, of course. But she’ll realize that she was flitting in between trees in a forest, and then she left an indentation in the tree known as Tommy Atkinson. And it changed him forever. The mark that she made remained there, instead of being smoothed away by time.

She'll realize that Tommy never forgot about her, even after all those countless years and names to remember. Even after countless birds had tried to make a nick on the bark of his tree, even after countless birds had flown into his life and back out.

And she will realize that she is a special bird.