As the children finally scattered back to their homes…the sun almost down with dusk covering all of us like a thin piece of black velvet, complete in its ability to make things go dark yet I was still able to make out Felix in the shadows a little ways away from the pack, still surrounded with cries and laughter…and I asked him if he learned anything. He said in a quiet voice that he did, that he never wanted to have to decide who receives and who is left in the without and you could feel the gravity of the lesson learned, we all felt it…instructor, student and passers by who watched this exchange played out in front of us, between us…
But Felix I said…”what did you learn”…”what lesson did you take for your own today”. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I only had some 17 pieces of candy and the children knew from yesterday that we only had a limited amount of starbust memories…and those old enough understood the game and they accepted this, as we did, but what was the best choice Felix?
He stood in the twilight and looked at me like an expectant student who didn’t study his lessons last night, didn’t have any answers and was called on by the teacher….and so he waited for the lesson to be taught. I asked him “what was the best answer Felix” which is the best choice!? He was silent and as the group of men gathered around me we all wanted to know the answer which would soon slip from my lips
Well Felix, the lesson was that…“All of the choices were bad, all of them sucked Felix…there isn’t anything fair about it”
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