The 2nd Memory
That was a painful sight.
When I was a child I loved spending my time on farms. From messing up the barn to riding on cows and catching tadpoles in the river. It was wonderful having the freedom of running around all day long and being surrounded by all those animals.
Nowadays though I see through different eyes. I have difficulties seeing how pigs are fenced in way too small stables, and how chicken prick each other’s heads.
Still, I don’t feel entitled to keep my dwarf away from this world. What use would it have to “hide” things from him that I personally find hard to digest. Maybe he will grow up with absolutely different values and believes, and that is his right.
So lately we spent many days at the farm. We feed the cows hay and watch the ducks play in puddles. Then we heard the other dwarves rushing around the corner, carrying brick-seized stones with them.
We followed, and saw how they threw those stones at the pigs, laughing, and calling them filthy beasts. I interefered, just before one of those dwarves was about to aim one of the stones directly at a pig’s head. I asked why they thought this was OK. They explained it wouldn’t matter, these were just dirty pigs and would eventually get slaughtered anayway.
6-years old dwarves are perfect mirror of the bigger picture.
We returned home. I took our wooden home pig Lotte and told my dwarf that she was very sad that those other pigs got hurt today. The dwarf said “AUA!” (Ouch), and put her to sleep in the little doll’s bed.