David McElroy

I recently watched a little boy trying to get candy from one of those old-fashioned gumball machines. I rarely see such machines now, but I was in a neighborhood hardware store that hasn’t changed much since the 1950s.

The boy was frustrated, because he couldn’t figure out how to work the machine. He kept trying to place a quarter inside the chute where the gum or candy comes out. He tried to turn the crank, but he didn’t understand that the quarter had to be placed into a slot.

I attempted to show him where to put the quarter, but he wouldn’t listen. He was angry at the machine and ignored me — and kept making the same mistake.

“It’ll never work that way,” I gently told him in a friendly way, “because you’re doing it wrong.”

In the last few days, I’ve found myself thinking about that little boy. I’ve been watching all of the unhappiness and anger and misery of the world around me. I’ve been thinking about the things I see people doing that I know are never going to give them peace and joy. And I keep thinking about what God must think when he looks at his creatures.

“Your lives are never going to work this way,” he must think, “because you’re doing it all wrong.”

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Be a clone and kiss conviction good night
Cloneliness is next to godliness, right?
— Steve Taylor, “I Want to be a Clone”

I was furious when I saw the woman smoking. I had stopped for gasoline Sunday night and the only employee on duty was stocking some merchandise outside — maybe 10 or 12 feet from where I was pumping gas. And she was smoking.

The odds of a spark igniting fumes from that distance are tiny. It was highly unlikely anything bad was going to happen. But it made me feel unsafe. Isn’t this against the law? Doesn’t she have better sense?

The world would be a better place if every one of you thought exactly as I do. Acted as I do. I’m sure of that. We wouldn’t have to argue about risks. You would all agree with me.

You would agree with me that it makes sense to be vaccinated. You would believe the right things about politics and religion and culture. You would make the right decisions for your own life. I would never have to silently judge you — because you would agree with me.

Whether you realize it or not — and whether you would admit it or not — you are unconsciously programmed the same way. You think everybody else ought to be like you.

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It was just an odd computer glitch. Something with a reasonable explanation. It has to be. But I’ve sat here for the last hour or so looking at a photo I didn’t intend to find tonight. And it pushed some unexpected emotional buttons.

I wanted to find a photo on my MacBook from about 20 years ago, so I typed in a file-name search. Instead of things related to what I was looking for, the system turned up five photos that were completely unrelated to that. At the top of the list was a photo from seven years ago. I didn’t open it.

Then I worded the search an entirely different way. It gave me a handful of files again. At the top was the same photo which had been at the top of the search before. I felt mesmerized by the weirdness of what I was seeing, so I opened the file, even though I knew what it would be.

There were two faces. One was my face. The other face was that of a beautiful woman who I used to know.

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