The danger with blogging, at least the way I do it, is that the blog can become a place to be unhappy. To bemoan the state of the political nation. Or to mark mournful anniversaries. We forget to celebrate what we have, to cherish the small moments. One thing I love is walking my boy Giorgie to school. So here I am, celebrating and cherishing, in what may become a School Run series.
2. Short People
Today’s theme, it turned out, was fairness.
Laden with bags (which he likes to manage by himself) Giorgie could not reach an itch. We felt that itches were unfair, specialising as they do in their unreachability, rejoicing as they do in their intrinsic unsatisfiability. If there were an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing God, he would not allow itches. Itches are evidence that there is no God.
What about the Turin shroud? Not great evidence for God either. A warped way to show yourself. There have to be better ways. And in terms of content of message: what does a ghostly image actually communicate? A better way, thought Giorgie, would be to send the Armies of Heaven to kick some earthly ass. That would be the way to show some proper God-like might. Bang a few heads together.
God would say “You all believe basically the same thing anyway, so why are you fighting?” That’s being ten years old for you. To the innocent mind, religion appears to offer no casus belli.
Interlude: what accent would Latin have been spoken with? We conjugated amare in passionate Italian, couchez-avec-moi French and Van-Morrison-esque Northern Irish. We agreed Latin probably had its own accent, which would remain unknowable – at best a ghostly presence; outline on cloth.
A lofty teenager passed us, long legs heading for Dulwich College. As Giorgie is above average height, we speculated as to his own prospects for teenage altitude. He wanted very much to be average. But there are advantages to height, I reminded him: tall men earn more. Quite a lot more, the stats tell us. Every inch is worth real money (doncha know?). Even though this might well turn out to be to his advantage, it hurt Giorgio’s sense of justice and fairness. How? Why?
If we value tall people, or at least expect to pay them more, what, he wondered, does it say about how we feel about short people? Then he remembered, of course, Randy Newman’s inspired Short People. Seeing how that song could apply to any kind of prejudice and unfairness – race, gender, religion – he amended it to his current topic in RE, Judaism.
And that is how, together, we arrived at school singing, “Don’t want no Jewish people round here.”
May God forgive us.