The child is father to the man, according to William Wordsworth. But I'm not so sure. In fact, if you ask me, the child is more like the stepfather of the man, or perhaps the eccentric uncle of the man, who the child scarcely sees once or twice a year. After all, the lives of most men amount to little more than a shadow of their infant plans, so somewhere along the path to maturity the auto-parenting went wrong. Apparently, the negligent child spent more time at the playground and the soda fountain than to providing adequate guidance for his successful transition to adulthood. Lucky, then, the man whose younger self even manages to remembers his own birthday.
I passed a pre-school daycare center on my way to work this morning. There was a familiarity about the architecture of the building or maybe just a pattern in the cloudy weather that instantly recalled my own experience of such institutions: an unformed identity confronted by a table of crayons and blank paper, not really knowing where he was or what he was supposed to do, but nevertheless trusting implicitly in the fact that he was placed there at that exact time for some specific reason that made sense to somebody. Four years old, what potential this child has. Who will he turn out to be? What kind of fledgling hero stands here in embryo? How will he learn to make a worthwhile difference in the world? This recollection of pubescent potency only lasted a second before I remembered how I preferred to hide in the toy cupboard rather than make friends with the other kids or draw pictures to stick on a fridge.
Nowadays, of course, in the Age of Transgenderism, may indeed not be the father of the man. It's also possible that the female child turns out to be the father of the man, and the male child becomes the mother of the woman, and any other progenitorial combination you can assign to any individual identity. It's a very confusing situation for any person trying to figure out who was father to him or herself. Just imagine the philosophical paternity suits that unscrupulous lawyers could file if they were smart enough to take advantage. Fortunately, the unimaginative and mediocre law student is usually father to the typical attorney.
Comments