Do you remember playing on the stairs? Marash Girl used to jump down from one step up, then from two steps up, then from three steps up, and only the best of us could jump from four steps up. Here's a story Marash Girl's father used to tell about a father and son and steps, or is it really about a father and son and steps . . .
Placing his little son on the first step, the father says to his son, Jump, my son.
But what if I fall? asks his little boy. Don't worry, says the father. I'll catch you.
So the little son, gathering all his courage, jumps from the first step and his father catches him.
Placing his little son on the second step, the father says to his son, Jump, my son.
But what if I fall? asks his little boy. Don't worry, says the father. I'll catch you.
So the little son, gathering all his courage, jumps from the second step and his father catches him.
Placing his little son on the third step, the father says to his son, Jump, my son.
But what if I fall? asks the little boy. Don't worry, says the father. I'll catch you.
So the little son, gathering all his courage, jumps from the third step and his father does not catch him.
The little boy falls and starts crying. But why didn't you catch me, Father? the little boy sobs.
The father replies, That will teach you never to trust anybody, not even your father.
i heard that story many times. i think it was dad's way of trying to teach us something that is elemental in life. He quoted, also, the Old Testament's caution many times: 'Cursed be the man who puts his trust in man whose breath is through his nostrils.' i never understood that verse until i went to college and began studying history. well, all you have to do is look at the carnage wrought by those to whom trust was given. hitler, stalin, mao, lenin, were all to whom trust was given and the curse was meted out commensurately.
ReplyDeletethe founding fathers of our country were similarly pre-disposed. they did not trust people, even less did they trust people who wielded power. that is why the premise of their political philosophy was 'that government is best which governs least, and thus designed a system of government intended to avoid the calamitous consequence of putting one's trust in man, which again is why they were opposed to 'democracies' and designed instead a 'republic', a democratic republic'. of course, uncle jack, our shoe repair man uncle, had it down perfectly. he attended the armenian apostolic church, and on those times that he was dragged to our armenian protestant church by his faithful wife, Mary, he never lost the opportunity to complain how untrusting Protestants were. one sunday, dad, having had enough of this, asked Jack for proof that Protestants were less trusting than those who attended the apostolic church. Jack looked at him with that sparkle of triumph, gold that glittered, and said, when your preacher reads from the bible, what do the people do in the congregation? why do they open the bible to the same scripture from which the preacher is reading? because they they don't even trust their own preacher, that's why.
But your father expected you to trust him!
ReplyDeleteDavid Mamet told this story about his own father, except I think in his case it was jumping off a mantlepiece. I always thought that must be what made him such a hard person.
ReplyDeleteI think those kinds of lessons are very "old country." They wanted kids to be tough and it was important to teach them to be suspicious of authority for obvious reasons. Today we wouldn't dream of doing this to a kid, it seems so cruel. But we punish our kids for things like not sitting still, not being quiet, not doing homework, not conforming. Are we so much better?