The little boy took such unreserved pleasure in the world that he acquired an expression so sweetly placid that neighboring parents who came into his presence cowered with guilt. Or resented him: He’s like a cake with too much frosting. Then one day the good mother brought her son to daycare. For this wonderful smiling little boy, going to daycare was like a sparrow flying into a plate-glass window. During his first hour he did not see the gentle hands offering the colorful jingling toys, he did not see the excited face every time he stacked his blocks more than three bricks high. Instead, he felt the small claw-like fingers jerking the squeezy bug from his grasp to the accompanying snarl of MINE! Is this the same universe into which the angels of plenty have thus far sustained me on wings of mercy through the land of milk and honey? the little boy wondered. Or is this but an illusory twinge of misery that I have heretofore known to be nothing but the bell that beckons the abundance back into the abode of my pleasure?
