A first grader's response to the teacher's puzzle of the week was so deep that the teacher shared it on Twitter, where it generated thousands of comments and over 265,000 likes.
Teacher and author Bret Turner of Albany, California, posted a picture of the question on the whiteboard: “I am the beginning of everything, the end of everywhere. I’m the beginning of eternity, the end of time & space. What am I?”
His accompanying comment said one student's response stunned the class with its depth.
“The first guess from one of my 1st graders was ‘death’ and such an awed, somber, reflective hush fell over the class that I didn’t want to tell them that actually the answer is the letter e, which just seemed so banal in the moment,” Turner wrote.
A subsequent tweet revealed other students made similarly deep guesses, including “NOT everything,” “all stuff,” “the end,” and “nothingthing.”
The tweet generated many responses, including a debate on whether the original student needs counseling for thinking about death at such a young age and many people pointing toward “God” as another answer to the riddle.
Others suggested “existentialism,” “ennui,” and “entropy” as answers beginning with the letter that was the actual answer for the riddle. Another user suggested “entelechy” — the conditions by which potentiality becomes actuality — as another possible answer.
“This is why I keep Twitter,” one user exulted.
Another suggested the student get an “A” for his answer.
Finally, Turner offered his view on what would happen if and when he shared the tweet’s popularity with his students.