Next Time You Meet

What could Mr. Genesis possibly do that Friday morning in his seventh-grade homeroom? Thirty years as a hometown middle school teacher hadn't prepared him for so many vicious voices of extreme and vociferous rage and protest and conflict all at once!

Sure, it was a much different world from the one he entered in Room 306 so very long ago, but were these really twelve-year-olds going on thirteen? Would bad turn to much, much worse the rest of the school year, and could anything Mr. Genesis say or do matter at all now?

He wasn't sure, but he was going to try, and his simple yet compelling response guides his young students through Going to Williamsport author Rich Agnello's latest short story Next Time You Meet.

Through a green dot inside of a blue-striped circle that is in turn surrounded by a red circle, Mr. Genesis applies the Circles of Influence theory from the business world to a plethora of societal conflicts symbolized in our teacher's homeroom quarrels: Immigration, race relations, financial inequality, gender roles, and many more.

Agnello does not attempt to change the whole world in Next Time You Meet, but instead through a teacher's plea, gives his students and all of us the opportunity to introduce something new and better, through the use of Next Encounter-based social relations. Through the here and now, Mr. Genesis begs his boys and girls to know what is the power of their green dot, what cannot be changed inside their red circle, and to know the difference navigating their blue stripes, each and every time the next time they meet someone.

In a world of phenomenal contention that has only become so much more manically contentious in recent days and months, it is Rich Agnello's profound hope through Next Time You Meet that while thousands of years of human history cannot be erased, we always have the here and now to resolve and improve the here and now, through what we do and say and how we treat each other here and now.