The Boy Who Wouldn't Come Down From His Star, Paul William Hollingsworth [simple e reader .txt] 📗

had a little money told themselves they just needed a little bit more money and then they wouldn’t want anymore. But that never turned out to be correct, so they built things called prisons for people who found this situation confusing.
They created things called rules and laws to help them solve disputes peaceably, but when they didn’t like the decisions, they created things called wars to solve the disputes violently. The wars were hard and long, painful and tragic, and many people were killed, but when they made posters and movies and games, everybody was happy again. In fact, one way of making money was for someone to pretend to be a great soldier. This was called acting. The actor earned great praise and admiration deriding anyone who didn’t want to be a real soldier. This was called patriotism. Everybody wanted to be a patriot, so that they wouldn’t have to be a soldier.
This was all confusing to the Boy. Because he didn’t think he’d like prison, he decided he wouldn’t think about it. He just wouldn’t grow up. If he decided to be born, that is.
In the meantime the Boy and his Star had come to a big city on a coast, a big city where the towers touched the sky until the Boy worried that a star might get caught on their spires. Like everywhere the Boy and his Star went, there were automobiles, bicycles, carts, newspaper and magazine stands, and traffic police and people milling about. The people needed the traffic police, other they wouldn’t know which direction to go. The traffic police made sure they didn’t get lost. The Boy considered it a benevolent system.
“The people here are feeble-minded,” he said to his Star. “They need constant guidance or they forget what they’re doing. Maybe they’re distracted by all the noise they make.”
“If that’s true,” replied the Star, “I wonder why they keep making it?”
The newspapers and magazines fascinated the Boy. Big, colorful photographs were displayed on the covers and front pages with big, colorful words splashed across or above them. Much of the news was grim, the Boy found out one day.
“This is just terrible!” said a man sitting on a park bench behind a stretched out newspaper. “All the news is bad! Crime, disease, accidents! That’s all it’s about. It makes me so depressed.”
“Then why do you read it?” asked the Boy, forgetting that no one could see or hear him.
“Because I need to know what’s going on!” said the man on the bench, forgetting that he couldn’t see or hear the Boy.
The Star led the Boy away from the man, who was, evidently, a logician.

A child had just been born in a hospital nearby, and the Boy and his Star hurried to go see. The baby girl was still screaming from the distress of coming into this new world. The Boy understood perfectly. The mother turned to the girl and smiled, saying to her husband, “she will be hot tempered, as hot as the sun at noon on a summer day. Her name will be Chow.”
The husband turned to his wife and said, “She will be a graceful dancer, as graceful as a willow growing near the river. I will call her Lian.” And so the girl had two names. Her mother called her Chow, and her father called her Lian. They would turn out to be both correct.

The Boy and his Star traveled to many places on Earth. They traveled over vast stretches of desert where people rode on camels and wore flowing robes. They saw richly decorated building with arches and round tops. They heard names such Abdul, Ahmad, Mohammed, Ali, Hussein, Yusef, and Rashid. They heard beautiful names such as Adara or Aliah, Hadiyah or Hanan. Names such as Iklam, Jala, Kalila and Numa rolled off the tongues of the proud and tired parents. There was such a dizzying array of names spread out before him, like rich silks in a bazaar, that the visitor could not make up his mind. He kept telling himself that he really didn’t like any of the names, but the truth was he loved them all. But he missed his pair of guiding stars!
They went to a green and rolling country where everyone talked about cheese and wine. There the Boy learned about names such as Pierre, Auguste, Emil, Amelie, Lucinde, Chloe, and Monique. He heard names such as Dietrich, Gunter, Bertrecht, Katarina, Elsie, Elga and Norbert. They traveled to snowy, northern lands where people were called Sven or Constantine, Nastasha or Tatiana, Hedda or Olava, Alf, Gunnar or Knut. They crossed vast oceans to lands where people were called Pete, Esteban, Jorge, Sean, Maria, Ramona, Pilar, Benito, Angelo, Belinda, Carlo, Lorenzo or Rosetta.
Finally the ears of both the Boy and his Star were ringing with the sound of so many names being spoken. Everybody had a name; everybody shared a name with someone else. And not one single name interested the Boy. Oh, he had thought they were all beautiful at first, but then after spending so much time down here and after hearing so many names, he had begun to feel indifferent. Besides, he didn’t really want a name, did he?
His Star was no help. Even the Star grew tired at hearing so many names, and the customs of the Earth people, as strange as they were, began to seem commonplace. He longed for the serenity of the spheres, the quietness of the heavens. Not even the noisy clang of colliding asteroids could match the din that these humans made!
One day the Boy said to his Star, “I’m tired. Can’t we go home?”
The Stars replied, “Have you chosen a name?”
The Boy hemmed and hawed, and then he lied a little bit.
“Yes,” he said, “but I picked a whole bunch. I need to go back home and think it over.”
The Star looked long at the Boy and sighed. He, too, needed to go back.
“Yes,” the Star said, “We’ve spent a long time down here. We’ve seen a few things. But now I think you’re right. It’s time to go back home.”

When the Boy saw his two guiding stars, he ran to jump into their arms, he was that happy to see them. The two old stars were clearly moved, but they didn’t do anything except put him back to ground and say, “Now, now, that’s enough of that. Decorum, you know. Boys have got to learn how to behave.”
Time passed and finally the two stars asked the Boy if he had decided on a name. The Boy realized that the moment had come at last. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
“No,” he said, “and I don’t want a name. I don’t want to go down. I want to stay with you two. I didn’t like it down there without you. I won’t go I tell you. I won’t go!”
With that the little Boy ran off, leaving the two guiding stars feeling lost and perplexed. That Boy was trouble the day he showed up, they both thought to themselves. But the truth was, they had missed the little fellow something terrible and were even gladder than the Boy when he came back from the planet below them.
“What do you think we should do?” asked one of the guiding stars to the other.
“What can we do?” the other replied.

More time passed, and the Boy’s Star went looking for him. He found him sitting dejected on a little asteroid whirling around a moon that had long ago spun out of its orbit and gotten lost.
“Well,” said the Star, “you’ve been given more opportunities than anyone else. We’ve dilly-dallied long enough. Name or not, you do have to go down. It’s just the way these things work. I am sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“When?”
“Now. They’re all ready below.
“Do I have to pack anything?”
“You don’t have anything to pack.”
It was true. Except for his three stars, he had nothing, not even a name. Well, at least when he got to where he was going, he’d get a name.
There was no one else to see him off. His two guiding stars were nowhere to be found. The Boy asked the Star where they were, but the Star said nothing. He looked sad, or at least very thoughtful.

There was a lot of darkness, and a muffled sound, and then the sound of many voices, and then a bright light, and then someone, shamefully, slapping the Boy on his bottom! The Boy let out a roar of indignation, and then he heard laughter. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t say anything. He tried to open his eyes, but they couldn’t focus on anything. He found that he couldn’t move his arms or his legs the way he wanted to or do any of the things he had gotten used to up in the sky. This made him very frustrated, but all he could do was cry. Then he fell asleep.
When he woke up he saw two giant faces staring at him. The Boy wanted to recoil at first, and then he wanted to reach out to them. And then the Boy gasped in astonishment! For although he couldn’t be sure, and although he would forget as the days passed until he forgot everything else that had happened, there was a light in the eyes of the two giant faces that shone like the light in the eyes of his two guiding stars! They had come down with him!
And then the mother whispered something into his ear, and the Boy knew what it was. It was his name. And it meant what every name means in every language of every people on every world: I love you.

The End


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Publication Date: 04-25-2011

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