“The Child is Father to the Man.”
That’s what Wordsworth wrote, and some months ago a three-year-old youngster demonstrated the truism (I want to pun it, ‘proved the altruism’) yet again. He and I were sitting in a car in a suburban parking lot, waiting for his grandma. Adric noticed, then looked closely at a black man striding across the parking lot.
“He looks like you, Jonathan,” Adric said.The man was about 25, buff, cue-ball bald, nattily dressed. I am nearly 70 and white, and so I was puzzled, but at least wise enough sometimes to try to see things with a child’s eye. Still, the resemblance escaped me, until I scratched my bald head.
There is hope for the multiracial society Adric is inheriting.