Saturday, 6 April 2019

The Kid Who Dropped Out.

I’m sometimes moved to reflect on what happened to this little chap:

 
He looks so happy, doesn’t he? And that’s a little odd because this picture was taken at about the same time that he stopped connecting with adult humans and embarked instead on a life of remaining at least one step removed and observing them. I’m told he became very good at it, too. It’s said that he could assess a person with almost unfailing accuracy on the basis of an initial ten minute conversation, and was then able to decide whether the newcomer had the credentials to join the elite 2% of the population with whom he wanted to engage, or whether they should be consigned to the other 98% fit only to be cast to the winds.

In spite of all this, it is rumoured that there was once a lady who caused the clouds in his breast to clear and reveal the warmth of the sun. By then, however, he was becoming old and decrepit and the prospect of aspiring to any kind of a connection had long since become redundant.

So where is he now and what is he doing? Well, the last I heard he was living alone and generally unregarded among the lanes, fields, hedgerows and copses of rural middle England. And he spends most of his time looking for unicorns in one sense or another. I’ve also been told that he gets lonely sometimes, but there’s a good chance that he hasn’t got too much longer to remain trapped in the swaddling bands of the mortal coil so I don’t suppose it matters a very great deal.

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