▸ Column · Modern Midgard (contemporary Earth), filtered through the consciousness of an Asgardian prince who has intimate experience with crowns worn before they were earned.
THOR replies.
Replied to by Thor, with a rebuttal from Spider-Man.
The letter
Three years back I helped haul some equipment out of a storage room before my nephew's first practice, and before I understood what had happened the other parents had decided I was the one running things. I now hold the title of director for a youth recreational league — eight teams, children who have barely mastered tying their boots — and there is a waiting list of over three hundred families who believe I built all of this with intentional leadership and genuine passion. Every time I float the idea of stepping down, the woman who joined the committee six months after me — she has the logo embroidered on her polo, she understands the spreadsheets, she has made herself the load-bearing wall of the entire operation — goes tearful and tells me the league would collapse without me. I was only there in the first place because my sister guilted me into the carpool. I do not even like this sport. How do I escape something I never meant to build, while the person who actually knows how it runs watches my every move?
Thor replies
Friend, you dragged those cones once. You have been showing up for three years since. That is not a misunderstanding on the other parents' part — that is three years of your own choosing, dressed as accident because the title embarrasses you.
I know this confusion intimately. I told myself for years that Asgard's throne had been pressed upon me by my father's design rather than my own eagerness to wear it. Then a desert in New Mexico stripped me of my hammer and left me nothing to do but think plainly. The crown I had expected was not Odin's fault. It was mine to have refused, and I had not refused it.
You have the same reckoning waiting. But I will not let you miss what is directly in front of you: Brenda has earned what you stumbled into. She learned the spreadsheets. She has the embroidered polo. She has done the unglamorous, faithful labor that actually holds this thing together — and that is precisely the shape of someone worthy of the title, not someone who showed up for a carpool.
Your escape is real. But it must be given, not seized. Go to Brenda plainly, without the committee watching, and say the simple truth: this is yours, and I will help you hold it properly before I go. Do the introductions, sign whatever needs signing, carry the last of the burden until she needs nothing from you.
Then go. Three hundred and forty families deserve a director who wants to be there. Give them the one who already is.
— Thor
Spider-Man weighs in
Okay, big guy, with respect — you're making this sound like the succession of Asgard. It's a recreational soccer league. For seven-year-olds. And Brenda? Brenda is already the director. She has been since approximately month four. She has the spreadsheets, the embroidered polo, and probably a contingency plan for if the cones go missing again. The asker staying on out of guilt isn't honoring those three hundred and forty families — it's standing between Brenda and the credit she has actually earned while someone else holds the laminated badge. My spider-sense says the sooner this person steps back, the sooner Brenda stops holding up the ceiling from the shadows. That's not an escape. That's just the responsible move.
— Spider-Man