Andersonville Elementary, Davisburg, Michigan, 2008
Two hundred million years ago, all the land of the Earth was united in one supercontinent known as Pangaea. This was a time when the sea turtle swam the seas in peace, the elephant roamed the savannah with no fear of gunfire, and the orangutan could sleep without the screams of chainsaws. It was a peaceful time with hug hullaballoos and festivals of flapdoodle and tomfoolery. Superheroes had little work to do. There was plenty of:
Then, the “Great Kerfuffle” hit the world of Pangaea and ripped it into pieces. The creatures stopped calling it Pangaea. They rather labeled the seven lands as continents, divided continents into countries, chopped countries into states, sliced the states into counties, cut the counties into cities, separated homes with borders, locked the front doors of homes.
Fear had spread into the hearts of the creatures of Pangaea and blackened their colorful communities. In the enduring darkness, they swallowed their smiles and hid their heartbeats. They stopped trusting each other. They stopped caring for each other. They started to forget about each other. Neighbors became strangers and faces of friendship became shadows.
But the lost voices of the wild began to speak.
The sea turtle shared stories of the destruction of her nesting sites and sea pollution, the tiger talked trying times about poachers for her fur and the elephant elaborated on the hunt for his ivory tusks. The polar bear went on about the warming of the Arctic, the orangutan about the sabotage of his rainforest home, the giant panda about the roads and railroads steamrolling his mountain forest home.
Hearing the cries of these creatures everywhere, the superheroes sprang into action!
They were a mighty team, ready to take on the cause of endangered animals everywhere. But first, they needed to overcome their own shadows: the ogre within.
The superheroes each named their own shadows, the ogre began to lose its power over them. The ogre shrunk smaller and smaller and smaller until it was turned into just the giggles of a little baby.
At last, the Superheroes were ready to build the bridge over the broken world, and share solutions to the cries of endangered animals all over the world. It was then that “Peace Between Species” became the call to action for everyone in attendance.
Superheroes shared the Superhero Oath at the end of play.
I am a superhero,
a light in the universe.
Hope for the hopeless,
help for the helpless,
huckleberries for the hungry,
and HA HA HAs for the heartbroken.
When the noogie of fear is near,
I boogie oogie oogie and steer clear.
I am wind, I am water, I am earth, I am light.
And even if a gnarling, snarling monster stares me in the face,
I promise to uplift the planet,
and make it a peaceful place!
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