A Young Lesson

I remember the first time I felt the dizziness and harrowing nature of the metaphysical inherent in our lives. That feeling you get when you know deep down you have done something to upset the universal order of things and the way to fix the situation is worse than the initial mistake.

I was seven years old playing at a friend's house. One of my friends had a BB gun. I asked if I could shoot it. He handed it to me, and I promptly took aim at a robin that sat bathing itself in a birdbath in my friend’s yard. I shot, and the robin fell fluttering to the ground. As I approached, the robin struggled to get to its feet in an attempt to flee, its wings splayed and shaking in an unnatural way on the ground. I leaned down and looked right into the robin’s brown, twitching, terrified eye. The look I saw in that eye was one of “why…?” I recocked the BB gun, pointed it at the robin's head and pulled the trigger. The bird's eye fell still. I sat the gun down on the ground, picked up the bird, and buried it in a shallow grave under some azalea bushes.

I left for home without saying a word.