Little Bobby

Little Bobby strutted. It’s the only way to describe it. I’m sure he didn’t mean to strut—in fact, if you spelled out the word and put it out in front of him, he probably wouldn’t know its’ meaning. But, undeniably, he was strutting.

It may have been totally accidental; Bobby had yet to realize that picking his nose in public was considered impolite in most cultures, so it wasn’t a stretch to believe the strut wasn’t even a conscious movement. But it was definitely there: his shoulder see-sawed up and down, his Spiderman book bag was slung jauntily over one shoulder, leaving the other red and blue strap bouncing off his lower back, and his step, too, was a little to long for his height, putting him ever so slightly off balance.

Little Bobby was strutting for several reasons. In school today, Little Gloria had fluttered her eye lashes at him. There had been a food-fight in the cafegymatorium, and he had gotten an A on his spelling test. Things were looking up.

And then, as he strutted down the quiet suburban avenue, he saw it. It wasn’t particularly large or conspicuous, but somehow, as it sat in the shade of the Jones’ big oak, it caught Bobby’s eye.

He stopped in mid-strut. He wanted to move closer, but something in the back of his mind told him that Mommy wouldn’t approve. But Bobby shook it off. He looked back down the street, past the manicured lawns, but no one was in sight. He looked in the other direction. No one appeared.

So Bobby approached it, slowly at first, circling it in ever tightening loops, until the brand-new Levis his mom had bought him the week before were brushing its’ red paint. It was such a strange object.

His first thought was that it was a jack-in-the-box, but instead of a puppet emerging from the top, there was a T-shaped metal handle. But he threw that theory aside. Little Bobby considered himself to be an expert when it came to jack-in-the-boxes, and he had never seen anything like this before.

It was a simple, red box, with the T-handle and two wires leading away from its’ base into thick, overgrown grass. Something was stamped onto the side—Nitro-something or other. Bobby tried to read it, but after a moment of squinting and sounding things out, he gave it up as a bad job.

And then Bobby remembered something. A similar object playing across his T.V screen…Wile E. Coyote standing over it, pushing down on the handle with a maniacal grin. What had happened next? Bobby racked his brains, but all he could remember was the cartoon character’s crazed, bloodshot eyes.

So Bobby, being of the curious nature, did what any 6-year old would do—he pushed down on the handle.

There was a pause. Somewhere, a chickadee was warbling. Little Bobby stepped back to admire his work.

And then, as suddenly as the first spoonful of Brussels sprouts had flown earlier that morning, an explosion rent the air. Bobby was thrown backwards by the sheer force of it, slamming into the trunk of the big oak, his fragile spine saved only by the backpack. There was fire everywhere, broken glass whizzing past him, screams, and in the distance, the frantic wail of a siren. Smoke billowed around him. Car alarms joined the cacophony of confusion as heat blistered the youngster. Were the leaves around him naturally red, or had flame consumed them? The expensive houses and even more expensive lawns were ablaze. The streets of Fairport were buried in rubble. In his final moment of irony, Bobby realized the whole fiasco had proved the old adage:

It takes a child to raze a village.