Random Encounters

I used to live for random encounters. You travel from place to place. You roll a d100. BAM: 1-4 crocodiles, estuarine, giant. You fight, pointlessly and amusingly. You survive. You keep going. It was all wonderful, pointless fun. Then one day, I got to be management. I could look at a roll of 76 (turtle, snapping, colossal) and turn it into a beach barbecue not to be forgotten, as the island sunset turns into an island which is not amused at having its shell decorated with chicken bones.

It has always been fun to be management. But the cardinal rule is: never forget when you were a worker; better still, never forget what it's like to be a client. It makes things so much more fun. I will never forget the day I caught those scouts attempting to forage under the back gate. In my head, the memory of self as a guy who crawled under the athletic field's fence, warring with the concept of crime and requisite punishment.

But some people seem never to have had childhoods, or earnestly put all childish things behind in a literal sense. They would never be caught doing childish things, or thinking childish thoughts – and at some point, the restriction becomes 'I will never be a child in any way'. And then they are caught anyway, caught by that very interesting statement of the Messiah in one of those chapters of Matthew's gospel that serious people sometimes oddly forget to read.

Here it is:

And he called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them;
And said, "Truly I say unto you, unless you are changed, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
"Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
"And whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name also receives me.
"But whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
"Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"

Yes, that's it. Along with the injunctions for fathers not to frustrate their children and such, there's this section about how moral offences against children are dire indeed. Sure, the old part of the Good Book also says that sparing the rod leads to spoiling the child, and hence recommends the precise use of the rod as a corrective; but it doesn't say that children in general must get the stick stuck to them unless there is good reason.