{"id":191,"date":"2006-03-06T23:55:58","date_gmt":"2006-03-07T06:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/?p=191"},"modified":"2006-03-06T23:55:58","modified_gmt":"2006-03-07T06:55:58","slug":"the-brutal-curiosity-of-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/?p=191","title":{"rendered":"The Brutal Curiosity of Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lake today breathed a joyful sigh of peace before spring break arrives, next week, to slosh her with boat fuel, beer and music. Polly and I stood thigh-deep in the cold water, prattling about this and that, while Atticus and Ford rollicked on and off the diving platform. Chas and Tabitha teetered chest-high in the wakes from the occasional ski boats, the water slapped playfully against the banks and the youngsters, who didn’t seem the least appalled. What I thought was a minnow and then maybe a tadpole turned out to be a mayfly larva, swimming like a snake an inch below the surface. As I lifted it out of the water atop my palm, it walked along walked along my hand with surprisingly deft strength against the water’s surface tension. In order to take a closer look, Ford did something I cannot do anymore: he lifted the insect between his fingers and carried it away.<\/p>\n

Most children enjoy letting slugs wander across their arms, caterpillars creep over fingers. Dad brought a jar of grasshoppers for the kids to play with last summer. Chas sat and picked them, one by one, out of the jar, letting them crawl all over himself. When I was Ford’s age, I remember picking up insects in this matter-of-fact way. I had Stag beetles, tarantulas, and pet grasshoppers, large, shiny red-on-black grasshoppers that I kept in mason jars. And then one day, I picked up an earthworm. It was cool, pinkish-brown and very long. I wondered at it’s sleekness, imagining that it could stretch to great lengths if it wanted to. So I pulled it gently between my fingers until it cracked in two places, exposing its tragic red insides to me. I remember dropping it, as I have seen Ford abandon his kill, only I felt sick. I still feel sick. I wonder what Ford feels, when his fingers erase another small life. Lifting him over the bank, as we were leaving, I noticed a very small gossamer wing on his arm.
\n(Sigh.) The mayfly?<\/p>\n

\"Img<\/a><\/p>\n

It is midnight in early March, and I’m hearing what I can’t bring myself to believe: a mockingbird serenading outside on the telephone pole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lake today breathed a joyful sigh of peace before spring break arrives, next week, to slosh her with boat fuel, beer and music. Polly and I stood thigh-deep in the cold water, prattling about this and that, while Atticus and Ford rollicked on and off the diving platform. Chas and Tabitha teetered chest-high in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,3,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austin","category-chas","category-daily","category-ford","category-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}