Mr. Terrible

“One of my Norwegian teachers once asked me a question.
'If you were a flower, Bjørn, what kind of flower would you be?'
She always came up with the strangest questions. I think she liked messing around with me. I was an appreciative victim. I was seventeen. She was twice that.
'A flower, Bjørn?' she repeated. Her voice was compassionate, pleasant. She leaned over my desk. I still remember her scent: warm, spicy, full of moist secrets.
Everyone was quiet. Everyone was wondering what kind of flower Bjørn would be. Or they were all hoping i would stammer and blush, as i was wont to do whenever she leaned over me with all her scents and heady temptations.
But for once i had an answer to one of her incessant questions.
I told her about the Haleakala Silversword.
It grows only in and around the Haleakala volcano on Maui. It spends twenty years as a modest ball covered with shimmering silver hairs storing up its energy, and then suddenly one summer it explodes extravagantly into bloom in yellows and purples. Then it dies.
My answer flummoxed her. For a long while she just stood there by my desk, staring at me.
What the heck had she been expecting me to say? a cactus?”
― Tom Egeland, Cirklens Ende