This Whole World
From folklore, adapted by Rick Bolger
Originally printed in the North Jersey Aquarium Society Reporter, May 1999
Aquarticles
It was Saturday afternoon...a man in his mid thirties was pounding away on a keyboard,
responding to an e-mail on killifish breeding. He verified his facts at a German website,
and attached a file from another. "This whole world is at my fingertips," he
thought. Soon he was off to a message board, anxious to keep up with some other obscure
aspect of fishkeeping. His young son, a bit scruffy and baseball cap askew, bounded in
from outside.
"Dad! Dad! Let's play catch!"
Without looking up, Dad replied: "Not now, son. Kinda busy here...why won't this
load faster? Maybe I ought to go check those baby livebearers again...Ahh, here it
comes...what's this? I should respond to this"
"But Dad, you promised to pay catch"
Again without looking: "Maybe a little later...I have a lot of e-mails here, then
I have tanks to clean"
"Aw, Dad"
Knowing that his persistent son wouldn't leave him alone, Dad looked for a way to keep
him occupied. He picked up a magazine and ripped off the back cover, which had a large
photo of the earth covering most of an ad. He quickly tore the ad into little pieces,
grabbed a tape dispenser, and shoveled the whole mess into the young child's hands.
"Here you go, Champ...show me how to put the world back together."
Dad went back to the internet, and the little boy went to work. In about a minute --
much less time than you'd expect -- he had it taped back together, and the picture was
right. It was a bit messy, as you might imagine, but a good job all in all.
"Here Dad...I got it!"
The man was preoccupied, planning a way to squeeze just one more tank into his
fishroom.
"DAD!"
His father glanced up, and was startled to see the job done.
"How...how'd you do that?" he asked in amazement.
The boy turned the ad over. "There's a picture of a man on the other side,"
he explained. "All I did was make sure the man was right, and that made the whole
world right."
Slowly and deliberately, the father turned off the switch on the power strip. His mind
was numb: If the man is together, his world is together. Suddenly he hugged his son as if
his life depended on it, because it did. The fish could wait.
"C'mon, Champ...let's find my mitt."
|