On the Wings of Icarus

The wings of Icarus

“Don’t fly too high. If you get too close to the sun, it will melt your wings. But Icarus would not listen. His wings melted and he fell into the sea,” Mr. Blocker said, “what is the lesson here?”

A flurry of hands waved at the teacher.

He pointed to Jerry in the back, “Yes.”

He said, “There are rules you must obey.”

“Yes,” the teacher said, “that’s true. Anyone else. Yes Sue.”

She said, “Listen to your elders.”

“Very good,” said Mr. Blocker, “Any questions?”

One boy raised his hand.

“Yes, Mark,” the teacher said.

“But that is not true,” he said, “the higher you go the colder it gets. It is always cooler on mount Lemon in Summer haven than here on the desert floor of Tucson. Sounds like someone just likes making rules to me.”

“No! There are rules and consequences. You could die.”

“Then,” Mark asked, “why lie about it? I seriously doubt that if you fly too high it will get hotter because you are closer to the sun.”

“Your wings will melt and you will fall into the sea.” Mr. Blocker said, “That’s what happens!”

Mark said, “The truth is the higher you go the cooler it gets.”

“That’s not how the story goes, you need to follow the rules or else,” the teacher said.

Pasty said, “but the base of the myth is a lie.”

Mr. Blocker said, “No there’s a lesson here to learn.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, “people lie to make a point.”

“No,” Mr. Blocker said, “sometimes you need to be obedient.

“Yeah,” Mike said, “and if I’m good, Santa Claus will make me the toy I want.”

Mr. Blocker said, Santa is a sprit that lives in your heart.”

“Then it is okay to lie sometimes,” Mark asked?

“Yeah and the stork brought my little brother,” said Sue.

A giggle passed through the classroom.

Let me ask you a question, said Mr. Blocker, “can Superman fly?”

“Superman is not real,” said Mike.

“Yet you all pay to see him in the movies,” Mr. Blocker said. “No one says I don’t believe it and walks out. You fly right along with him, but none of you try to fly around the classroom.”

“So some lies are okay if we all agree to the lie,” said Sue.

“Sure,” said Mr. Blocker, “what’s a hundred dollar bill really worth, and yet if one blew in here we would all jump for it. A lie we all agree on believing.”

Pasty said, “and some agreements make the traffic move. A red light means stop, a green light means go. It could be any color but we agreed on these. It is one of the few things everybody agrees on doing, strange.

John said, “I notice that most drivers on the highway go faster than the speed limit, unless there is a cop around. Then, they go exactly the speed limit. They lie. Technically they break the law. Does that Make them bad drivers?”

Mr. Blocker adjusted his glasses. “It makes them human.”

“So,” Mark said, leaning back in his chair, “Icarus didn’t fall because he flew too high. He fell because his wings were poorly engineered.”

A few kids snorted.

“Think about it,” Mark continued. “If wax melts near the sun, it would also melt on the runway in Phoenix in July. The problem wasn’t height. It was design.”

Mr. Blocker crossed his arms. “The Greeks didn’t have aerospace engineers.”

“Exactly,” Mark said. “They had storytellers.”

The room grew more quiet.

“Stories aren’t blueprints,” Mr. Blocker said slowly. “They’re warnings.”

“But warnings about what,” asked Sue?

“Pride,” Jerry offered.

“Disobedience,” said Pasty.

“Bad materials science,” muttered Mike.

Laughter rippled again.

Mr. Blocker walked to the window and looked out at the flat shimmer of Tucson heat. “You’re right about one thing,” he said. “The higher you go, the colder it gets. Pilots wear oxygen masks. Climbers freeze on Everest. The sun doesn’t melt you because you’re closer to it by a few thousand feet.”

Mark smiled slightly.

“But myths,” Mr. Blocker continued, turning back to the class, “aren’t about physics. They’re about limits.”

“Whose limits,” Mark asked?

“That,” said Mr. Blocker, “is the real question.”

The bell rang, but no one moved.

“In the story,” the teacher went on, “Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high or too low. Too low and the sea would soak the feathers. Too high and the sun would melt the wax. It was a balance.”

“So the myth lies about temperature,” Mark said, “but tells the truth about balance?”

“Maybe,” said Mr. Blocker. “Or maybe the real lie is that the sun punished him at all.”

The class waited.

“What if Icarus didn’t fall because he flew too high,” Mr. Blocker asked? “What if he fell because he flew higher than anyone else ever had… and the people below needed a reason?”

The room went still.

“You mean,” Sue said quietly, “they couldn’t stand that he made it?”

Mr. Blocker nodded once.

“It’s easier,” he said, “to say the sun destroyed him than to admit he escaped.”

Mark stared at him.

“History,” Mr. Blocker said, “is written by the ones still on the ground.”

The bell rang again, longer this time.

As the students gathered their things, Mark paused at the door.

“So what’s the lesson,” he asked?

Mr. Blocker smiled faintly.

“Build better wings.”