Family Division:

Once upon a time, there was a family. This family was an ordinary family. A mother, a father and a couple of children. They were ordinary. That was until the birth of their third child, a son. The parents were not expecting to have another child so soon. And since they could not really afford this child, an extra mouth to feed, they resented him. They would constantly mistreat him and neglect him. And the family’s other two children imitated their parent’s hostility towards this child. The family watched with resentment as the young child grew, seemingly unaffected by this constant rejection and mistreatment. The child would simply glance over every instance of abuse that they would force in his direction. Instead, he seemed far more fascinated with the toys of his brother and sister. His parents never bought him toys. But every opportunity he had he would seek something productive to do. This child seemed to be growing, maturing much faster than any other normal child. He was walking by the time he was four months old and talking at two months. As he grew into a toddler, he graduated from these toys and started to read his parent’s book collection. No one could really explain from where he learned to read. But there he was, reading everything he could get his hands on. His family watched all of this with disdainful confusion but they were not swayed from their stubbornness to withhold love and affection from him. Until one day, the whole family were in the television room, watching a sports game. The game was half over when the little boy wandered into the room. The father yelled at the boy, “Get me a beer! Make yourself useful, will ya’?” So, the boy sauntered back from the room and entered the kitchen where he opened the fridge and collected a beer for his father and returned. When he pushed aside the TV room doorway, his older brother threw a shoe at him. It just missed him. “You’re interrupting the game!” The brother cried. The little boy dropped the beer and it broke. The father stood and rushed across the room, spattering, “You’re going to have to pay for that beer.” And he pushed the little boy. “Now, get me another one!” The father cried. The boy went, fetched another beer and returned. When he had set the beer down on the table next to his father, he squirmed into a seat between his mother and brother. The team they were cheering for was losing with twenty seconds left on the clock. Amidst sighs of defeat in the family home, the father was about to switch off the television, when the little boy said, “The team you are cheering for will win.” The family laughed at him with incredulity and the father smacked him across his head. The little boy went silent. The family stood and began doing things around their house. However, the father did not turn off the TV. The mother returned to the kitchen and the father started to play with his son and daughter as they sat with their toys. The brother and the sister laughed with glee as the father pretended to crash a couple of little dinkie cars together, making sputtering noises with his lips as they contacted each other. The little boy simply sat and watched the television. And when the game returned after a commercial, the time counted down. Until, the family heard uproarious applause on the lowered sound of the television. Their heads turned slowly and watched the game. Their team had won. The father called out with glee to the kitchen for the mother to return. The whole family was 

cheering and jumping up and down. Then their heads turned towards the little boy, seated on the sofa, quiet as ever. The father harrumphed and shook his head. The mother however, knelt down next to him and asked “How did you know?” The boy began by listing out factors such as the weather, the individual quality of the players on field and, the quality of the teams and the circumstances of the game. Who could understand him? To his father and even his mother who knelt next to him then, he spoke nonsense. Still the mother took note of this. After this incident, family business returned to normal. They whole family went back to their hostile treatment of the little boy and the little boy returned to his inner world of peace. Now, there was an election coming up soon in their country. In this election, there was a woman who spoke very brazenly. Because she spoke so abruptly on certain matters, some considered her to be offensive. This animosity between the press of the land and this woman candidate was very palpable. The funny thing was that none of that animosity was directed toward what this candidate was saying. Because what she was saying, to any reasonable mind, was well, reasonable. The animosity developed entirely because of the way she delivered her message. She was offensive, they said. Anyways, about a month into her campaign, pretty much every news program was covering this candidate 24 hours a day. It became a fad to make fun of her. There were polls, there were predictions and every poll, every prediction called that she would lose the election terribly. And one day, while the entire family were seated in their television room, the reporter made a humorous crack into the female candidate’s appearance, suggesting that she was too ugly to win the election. The entire family, there in the television room roared with laughter. The young boy simply sat calmly with his hands collected across his legs. The immediate silence that followed their laughter was broken by the young boy’s soft voice saying, “She will win the election.” The family turned their heads slowly to analyze him. All of a sudden, the father got visibly upset and started screaming at the boy. “Don’t you hear?” He sputtered, “She’s too ugly to win. TV says so.” The boy remained seated very still and smiled a little as his mother approached him and asked him why he would say such a thing. Again, he laid out before them a bunch of statistics, facts and knowledge she had no idea where he would have procured. She didn’t understand what he said. Something about voter demographics and the fact that she was speaking reasonably. The young brother and sister of the boy laughed virulently at him. And for the following two weeks, until the day of the election, the boy was shunned and forbidden from eating with the rest of the family. Scarcely did he receive anything at all to eat during those weeks. But when the night of the election came, the whole family once again sat in front of the television and tuned into the news. And when the votes started to turn in, predictions flipped. All of a sudden this female candidate was favorite. And after she had won a couple of provinces in the country, the reporter of the news station broke down in tears. The family looked at their son, the small boy and then back at the television screen with awe. From that day on, the family kept closer eyes on their son. They were trying to find out from where he got his information. And so, they put a microphone in his crib and, naturally, invited him to dinner more often. They would ask him questions at dinner, all of the time, in order to see if they could ascertain any other valuable information. The brother and sister even took part in these conversations, which they recorded. The little boy quickly became known as the four year old genius. Of course, his presence was not publicized in the mainstream media. And when the parents discovered that their son’s words were very valuable to others, they began to charge companies who wanted access to his knowledge. When the little boy was old enough, they would take him out to parties and for walks in his neighborhood. The public loved seeing him. They adored him. They called him affectionately, their little champ. And so, his popularity grew. One day, the little boy asked inquisitively where the money was going that his parents were making as a result of what he was saying. They simply announced proudly, “What money?” But the little boy knew their scheme. There was a massive company, which made a business out of selling air to the public. The air was top quality Oxygen, marketed as Himalayan air from the top of Mount Everest. It was packaged in paper boxes, with a straw in the top, where consumers could place both nostrils. The company wanted a good word about itself from the boy so they paid the family a lot of money to pursue him to say something good about them. This company already held the public in its grasp. The reason for this search was simply vanity. So, the family went to the boy, now getting older, sat him down to have dinner with them and started pummelling him with questions. The boy was suspicious because at the table, which remained unset with anything aside from these paper box things, there was also a large quantity of merchandise from this company. When they started to ask questions about his opinion about the company, he shrunk back in his chair and lowered his eyes. “I love O Two in Box,” said the mother triumphantly. The father echoed, “I won’t go a minute without real air, from O Two in a Box.” The brother and sister smiled eagerly. A moment of silence passed when, still staring at the little boy, the family asked the boy what he thought about the product. The boy looked up sadly and smiled a bit before saying softly, “I don’t get it. They’re just selling air.” The family chimed in, “But that is the point! Real air, they are selling.” The little boy shook his head a little. “Who told you this was real air?” And sniffing a big waft of air from the room, he said, “This is real air.” And standing, he moved to a different part of the room and repeated the gesture of sniffing at the air. “This is also real air.” The parents shifted the conversation quickly. The following day, the family were out for a walk when they ran into another couple of families they had known. They were near to a park. The families agreed to allow their children to go to the park while they talked near the benches. The father of the little boy was hesitant, not out of concern for the well-being of the boy but rather because he had made him so much money. Eventually they persuaded him to let the boy go along with the others. The boy went and when the other children, two or three bigger boys had him out of sight behind the playground, they started yelling at him. “You cost our dads so much money you little brat. Everyone knows that real air is only from O Two from a Box. Never say anything bad about this company again.” And from this day onwards, people started to look angrily at the little boy. It got to the point where the little boy was rejected again by his family. He would not let this stop him though. He continued his personal studies at home. Though, from this time, he kept to himself much more. And even when his family invited him to dinner, to play or to watch television, he would refuse. It got to a point where his father started shouting at him and became violent because the boy seemed to want to spend more time with his thoughts than with his loving, concerned family. The fact is that he truly felt intimidated. 

He had developed so much intellectually and logically, you may say that he neglected to develop in other ways. Emotionally and mentally he was unequipped to handle this sort of stress. So, he did what seemed natural to him. He refocussed his attention toward his thoughts. One day, when his family had had enough of his isolation, they summoned him once again. This time the family sent the mother to coax him with affection into taking part in the family again. He knew and understood well that they were probably not making much money at the moment and this was the reason for their constant nagging now. The mother stroked his hair and brushed his cheek with a soft hand. She kissed him and hugged him. Finally, the boy agreed to come to the supper table with his mother. And when she led him into the room, the family cheered, all smiling gleefully and warmly. As soon as he sat, his mother offered him choicest foods and drinks, all of which were his favorite. He wondered how many times, over the past month or so of his isolation, they had prepared for him his favorite meal, hoping that he would come. He accepted reluctantly, as his mother forced a spoon into his mouth. He was happy. For the first time in a long time, it felt like his family wanted to know him for him. Since his birth in actuality, he imagined. That was when they all began with the questions again. From his sister, “What do you think of the current situation in. . .” From his brother, “How much do you love. . .” From his father, I know I just love this product, how about you?” The boy looked politely into his lap and sat still a moment until his parents could tell he was not going to say anything. His father started to raise his voice a little. That was when the boy stood and went to walk out of the room. His father ran and stood in front of him, blocking his path. “You are my son. You will listen to me,” the man said with an unintended twist of his face. “Now, we are going to return to the family eating table and we are going to have a nice family conversation.” The boy said softly, “About what? Crazy products and other fads that need some advertisement?” The father looked at him with disbelief and incredulity. “What do you mean?” The boy smiled softly and said, “I know what you all are doing. I want you to stop.” The mother rushed across the room and knelt beside him as she attempted to win him over with affection again. While she was doing this, his father started pacing across the floor in front of them, muttering inaudible sentences. Finally, he stopped and turned to face the boy and his mother and said very harshly and very severely and again with that little twist on his face, “You are my son! You belong to me.” The rest, reader, the conclusion to this little tale of this unusual family is up to the reader’s imagination. Some say that the little boy ran away from home to find great uses for his talents. Others say that the boy finally asserted himself. Whatever the case may be, I can assure you that the boy found freedom and peace. - From my Book Fables of Good Will.