A four-year-old boy looked out his mommy's high-rise window.
"Looky!  Looky!" He squealed with joy, "Can I play in the snow?"
The sun was breathtaking and no clouds were polluting the sky.
Meanwhile, the television had caught his mommy's eye.

"No, you can't go outside right now.  I need you here with me"
And she closed her eyes tightly to suppress her sudden misery.
Daddy was at work, and had left just two hours ago.
She feared that he'd become an angel lost in this dusty "snow."

She looked at her son, so young, face pressed against the windowpane.
He knew nothing happening around him.
He wouldn't understand his city's pain.
He turned his attention toward his Lincoln Log set
and his toy soldiers made his buildings crumble.
"Bang! Bang!  You're dead!" He declared in his makebelieve world.

Is it conditioned in us to wish this fate
on any race, religion or nationality?
Is it condidtioned in us to ignore the world around us
and lose ourselves in fantasy?
His mom looked at him and her eyes were open
for the first time in questioning fear.
The hope, or destruction, of Mankind...lies here.

©September 2001, Lori S. Maynard
An old poem just to remind
That 4-yr-old boy will turn 11 this year...
Is it conditioned in us?