Also in friends... kinda random...
His teacher told him that some things never change. Seven times seven will always be 49, she said, with all the confidence in the world. But she was wrong. When he tried to explain it, he didn't have the right words, so everyone laughed at him. But that night, he went home and thought about it and wrote her a paper on it and he was right. Seven was a symbol. Right then, it did mean six plus one. But in another language, maybe, or in another world, or maybe ten million years in the future, it wouldn't mean that anymore. The definition of words changed, so it was very possible that later, seven would mean anger. Anger times anger was not 49; it just wasn't. It wasn't that it would never be that, it was that it wasn't that now. If someone went to work and said seven, but meant 700, and everyone knew that because it was the way they talked at the job, then seven times seven would not equal 49, unless they also shortened 490,000 to 49. The point was, it wasn't always 49.
When he turned in his paper, she sighed and told him he was ridiculous. He didn't think she ever read it, because she never gave him any type of counter argument. She never even told him he was right, and when PTCs came around, she told his dad that she thought he was a fine student, but that he argued pointless causes, which didn't make sense because the class hadn't even let him finish his thought, and she hadn't even read his argument. But the point was, he was right. Things that seem to never change could change.
Zuko told him that some things never change. We'll always be friends, he explained, with all the confidence in the world. But he was wrong. Parents got in the way and before he could explain that his dad had taken his phone, please, I didn't mean any of that, I'm sorry - Zuko had told him that he wanted a break and that maybe they could be friends again but not that day. It had happened so fast but then it was done and he was alone, and he didn't know where he had gone wrong.
When he asked Zuko about how things never change, he just sighed and told him that this had changed. He told him that it was his fault, and that if he had been different, it wouldn't have changed. But it did change, he wanted to say, and you said it wouldn't. Zuko had said it wouldn't change, but it did, and it wasn't fair. Of course, later they did become friends again, but the lesson had been learned. Things that weren't supposed to change could change.
His dad told him that some things never change. He told him that he wasn't good enough, and that he never would be. He told him that he couldn't learn fast enough, and that he never would be able to. He told him that he was just a waste of space and time and energy and everything and that he would never be anything else. He said he was good at math, so his dad showed him how very much not good at math he was. So, that was that. There wasn't a way to change. Some things really never did change.
And then his dad left, disappeared, was sent somewhere else, and wasn't a part of his life anymore. And he didn't know what to do, because he still wasn't good enough and couldn't learn fast enough and was just a waste of space and time and energy and everything and would never be anything else. And people started telling him that all those things could change, too. And he was confused, because everything technically could change, but this… well, it couldn't.