WE heard a sudden, ear-splitting yell. I couldn’t make out the exact words, but it sounded like, “No, I won’t!”
Then the source of the noise, a little, tousle-haired boy, about five years old, a look of complete and unashamed defiance on his face, threw himself to the ground. He began twisting and writhing on his back, clutching what looked like a small toy in one of his hands.
Two men, both tall and thin, dressed in fashionable, tight shorts, stood over him. They were, it seems, pretending to be his parents.
One of them began to reason gently with the boy. The child would have none of his logic. He remained on the ground right in the path of pedestrians in a public place. The sun would fall from the sky before logic would ever convince him to get off the ground.
It was just a fleeting glimpse of everyday life in contemporary America.
I think the boy was teaching the men a lesson. He was teaching them something vital, surely not for the first time and definitely not for the last time, though they may be old and totally broken before they finally get the point.
“Equality” in marriage may triumph, but it means nothing to a small child. For this boy, a true monster in the making, love will never be enough.
Many years from now, when the deformed character of this man-made monster is evident to the people who try to live with him, no one will remember that distant day when he threw himself on the floor and said ‘No.’
