jer_j
Scholar
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- Sep 14, 2009
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The Boy and His Egg
When going out to check the mail the other day, I crossed paths with a school-aged child walking down the street in front of my house, carrying an egg. I always tried to be friendly to the little ones, so I stopped to show interest in what was obviously an object of immense pride for him.
“Whoa,” I said. “Cool egg!”
“Thanks!” he beamed.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I just found it in the woods.”
He seemed so happy, I decided not to bother him about the fact that he had basically killed a baby bird.
Instead I knelt down next to him and asked playfully, “Do you know what’s inside it?”
“Nope. But I’m pretty sure it might be a baby robot.”
“A baby robot? Wow, who’s ever heard of such a thing?”
“A bunch of people. Ten of my friends all said they’ve seen baby robots. Tommy drew a picture of one during math class.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “You children have the most active imaginations.”
“It’s not imagination.” The boy started into a defiant tone, and I felt the first pangs of skeptical irritation. “They did see baby robots. And I really think there might be one in here.”
“Well, don’t put too much stock in what a few friends say. It’s probably more likely there’s a baby bird in there.”
“Prove it!”
Breaking the egg was obviously out of the question. So instead I said, “Well, isn’t it more likely to be a bird? I mean, we see birds all the time – ”
“Not all the time. I don’t see one right now.”
“But I mean we see them regularly. They’re a part of our everyday experience, whereas baby robots – ”
“Define everyday experience.”
“Uhh… I don’t want to start splitting hairs with you. Let’s instead just agree that it’s far more likely to be a bird – ”
“You keep saying that, but where’s your proof?”
“I’m not saying I can prove it’s a bird. It might be a lizard, I guess, or a snake. But – ”
“Or a baby robot.”
“Highly unlikely, but – ”
“So where’s your proof that it’s a bird?”
“I can’t prove that it’s a bird, and I’m not trying to. I just mean that if people rarely see baby robots, and there’s so little basis for believing that a baby robot would be inside an egg, then it’s far more likely to be a bird.”
“But WHERE’S YOUR PROOF that it’s a bird?”
“I don’t have proof, and I’m NOT TRYING TO PROVE it’s a bird.” By now my face had turned red and I was forcing myself not to grab the kid by the collar and shake him.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. It was a picture of a robot.
“See, this is a baby robot standing next to Tommy’s house.”
Even from the childish drawing, I could roughly estimate the size of the baby robot based on perspective and relative size. And I saw a problem. “But that thing’s way too big to fit inside an egg,” I said. “And not only that, but robots couldn’t grow from babies to adults, because they’re made out of metal. Not only is your idea unlikely, it’s totally impossible.”
“Maybe - according to society’s current ideas of science.”
Apparently this brat had gained a vocabulary without the knowledge to complement it.
“But the egg is this size,” I held my fingers an inch a part, “and the robot is this size.” I held out my hands with about two feet between them. “It just doesn’t work!”
“The scientific ideas of today indicate that a large robot will not fit into a small egg. But isn’t it closed-minded to think that will never change when we make new discoveries? That someday we won’t learn strange new things we can’t imagine right now?”
I knew kids could be ignorant. But such elaborate ignorance blew my mind. It was almost impressive – in an utterly wasteful, depressing way.
“No but there are some things that are just so implausible that it doesn’t benefit you to theorize – ”
“That still doesn’t prove it’s a bird!”
I threw up my hands and screamed, then ran down the street to my house.
*****************************
I had resolved never again to speak a word to the little snot-nosed devil. But sitting on the couch, thinking of all the stupid things he said, I got restless. I shifted back and forth, then paced across the living room, all the while telling myself, “Don’t go back out there. Don’t go back out there…”
But then, through the window, I saw the boy parading his “robot egg” up and down the street, and I just needed to…
“DON’T GO OUT THERE!!!” My conscious reasoning screamed to my base impulses. I tried to stay strong.
But then… Then I thought of a brilliant point I could make to him – one so clear and concise that the logic was unavoidable, even to that hellish punk. There was no way he could get around something so obvious!!!
So I ran outside and spelled it all out for him – explained the difference between trying to prove it was a bird and using the possibility of being a bird as an alternate explanation that made the “robot hypothesis” infinitely less likely by comparison – then waited in anticipation.
He looked at me for a minute, cocked his head as if thinking, then said:
“That still doesn’t prove it’s a bird.”
“But I wasn’t TRYING to prove it’s a bird!!!”
“Yes you were.”
“NO!!! I WASN’T!!!”
I was now screaming into the face of this deep, dark logic vacuum, this epic failure of the public school system, this…
“Then why did you say it was a bird.”
“I didn’t! I was just said that was a POSSIBILITY!”
“But if you can’t prove it, then – ”
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” I ran back into my house and slammed the door behind me.
*****************************
I had resolved never again to speak a word to that depraved spawn of outer darkness. But sitting on the couch, thinking of all the stupid things he said, I got restless…
* All people mentioned in this work are fictional. Certain connections to real life people or debates may be made by some, but such interpretation is entirely the responsibility of the reader. Adjectives used to describe the boy are solely those of the narrator, representing HIS feeling about the boy, and are not meant as an insult to any living person.
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