By Hasen Hull
I find him in the back garden, head lowered, a look of guilt—if a child understands such a thing.
“Mommy told me what happened at school today.”
No answer.
“You can’t hurt people, Noel. It’s not right.”
“He hurt Tom.” He looks away. “Then he hurt me.”
“I know, Noel, but you can’t hurt him back. You have to be the bigger man. Can you do that for me, Noel?”
He pauses. A stream of ants navigate past his shoes. He lifts a foot and it lingers in mid-air before stepping carefully over, with a face that says he’ll try.
This was charming and the end perfectly done.
Thought you should have omitted “if a child understands…” Even very young children do feel guilt when they sense they’ve done “wrong” and Noel is presented as old enough to reason with. So that seemed a waste of word-count.
And–this is quite picky, I know–but at that age wouldn’t his classmate be “Tommy” rather than “Tom?”
As writer and reader I feel–especially in very short-form fiction–that every word matters. This otherwise would have been a perfect little story.
A beautiful and quiet story, well told.
A beautiful little story of a lesson well learned. Concise, well-written. A winner.
A bit too goody, goody although well written and if the writer was American, Canadian or Australian then that is OK because they live in a culture of political correctness. As a British Psychoanalytic Child Psychotherapist, I would be amazed at such easy compliance. That said it was a beautifully crafted story, in my opinion ,and it could, I suppose, have been an ‘ah!’, ‘ha’ insight moment. As literature though, I loved it. Just got to find a way of escaping from psycology.
My first reaction: I love that story. It is faultless. Right on target.The child was defending, not attacking, so stepping over the ants is perfect!