There was a child today on the playground, intent upon playing and being involved in what the game should have been. But every so often his friend would grab him and want to wrestle, as though wrestling were a parallel game, something one did as an interlude -- a way to pretend (but not really make believe) there was a contest or challenge as important as that game where they mostly laughed and where the rules had prevailed.
It was disconcerting to the boy and he seemed not to know how he ought to respond. Fighting, even if couched as a game, seemed foreign to him. Watching, I sometimes wished he would pick up his friend and hurl him the length of the playground. I was also glad it was not in his heart to fight, and in those moments I hoped that fighting would never become a choice he would make. It can be hard, I thought, to have his sensitivity, especially in those moments when others might rather be more primitive, but it is in that sensitivity that the world will find its future if it is planning to become more than a desert.
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