Free Will

“Mom?”

“Yup, bud?”

Puck stood on my bed changing into his school uniform polo after breakfast. He clearly had some frustrated thoughts on his mind.

“Yali gets to do whatever he wants.”

“Well, not really…”

“But he really does, Mom.” – I could feel a proposition coming. – “People should get to have free will.”

“What are you saying?”

“That I should get to do whatever I want… except for all the wrong things.”

Somewhere, a theologian’s ears were burning.

Between the plumber gutting the basement drain early that morning, Carrie-Bri and I recording baseball podcast episode #100 before lunch, and Yali’s very first official speech therapy session early that afternoon, the little fellow careened from one room to the other, babble-yelling to himself. Sometimes I admit he yells more like a middle-aged Korean housewife from my Korean dramas than a two year-old boy. Today was one of those days.

It wasn’t quite four o’clock and we were still up at school. Heidi had decided to dress Yali in one of her t-shirts and a pair of pink shorts.

“I’m going to teach you how to be ME!” she declared. “Come on, girlfriend!”

And he sauntered off behind her down the hallway with a silly grin on his face.

When Heidi-lessons were concluded, we left school in the rain, both Puck and Heidi a little more dumpster-diver rich with treasures like empty Ranch dressing bottles and pretzel boxes. The jumbo peach cans, however, were returned before departure.

At dinner, the boys – all three of them – amused each other with staring contests. Even Yali joined in by laughing hysterically, although I’m pretty sure he had zero idea what was actually going on.

Meanwhile, I snagged a fat tootsie roll from the parade candy bowl.

“Mom!” Puck chastised me.

“You know better,” I told him. “Never leave chocolate out around me. Even if it is… fake chocolate…”

“Well, just don’t eat all of it,” he scolded me again. “Because that would be hogging of you.”