Strolled up to the local deli for tomatoes today, and stopped for a cappuccino on the way. A group of young boys were playing in a tree house outside the coffee shop, and a younger boy stood at the foot of the ladder, looking up hopefully. His parents were eating breakfast at one of the tables, and the boys in the tree house were local friends. He asked if he could play with them and they said he needed to know the password, because it was a club. After a little discussion, they asked him how old he was, and he said, 'Five', to which the response was, 'You have to be six'. The child almost burst into tears of anger at being the wrong age and stomped back to the comfort of his mother's lap, where she tried to ply him with food, but he wasn't in the least bit interested.
It struck me how cruel children can be and how the parent of one of the children, who was sitting nearby, seemed oblivious of her son's callousness. As I pondered whether to suggest to the kids that this new boy might contribute towards the fun they were having, the outsider took out an electronic device that played movies, and it wasn't two seconds before the boys were out of the tree house and crowded around him like his oldest and best buddies. His mother gave them a hairy eyeball but said nothing and his father held out his hand to retrieve the expensive toy before it could be fingered or dropped, and the next thing, one of the boys was whispering the password to the tree house into the outsider's ear. In no time, he was up that ladder and all was well in the world.
There are some lessons here.
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