A Modern Fable
Once upon a time there was a little boy. When he was three weeks old his parents turned him over to a baby-sitter.
When he was two, they dressed him up like a cowboy and gave him a toy gun.
When he was three, everybody said, “How cute as he went about singing a beer commercial.
When he was six, his father occasionally dropped him off at Sunday school on his way to the golf course.
When he was eight, they bought him a BB gun and taught him how to shoot sparrows. He learned to shoot windshields by himself.
When he was ten, he spent his after-school time squatting at a drug-store news stand reading comic books. His parents both worked in the daytime.
When he was thirteen, he told his parents that other boys stayed out as long as they wanted to—so they said he could.
When he was fourteen, they gave him a deadly 2-ton machine, wrangled a license for
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