“Give it to me big boy!”
Alan picked up speed as she started moaning. He was just starting to achieve the desired result when he heard the door creak behind him, followed by a small voice saying, “Father?”
He had forgotten to lock the door. Suppressing a scream of frustration, he slammed his laptop shut, grabbed a folder from his desk and used it to cover his lap. “Yes, child?” His voice came out huskier than normal, but at least he had succeeded in keeping his tone level so as to hide his frustration.
“Are you ill, Father?”
Alan cleared his throat. “No, my child. Only tired from such a long day.”
“Are you still working?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“When will you be finished?”
Alan suppressed a sigh, realizing that, after this interruption, he was unlikely to be able to finish today, but knowing he couldn’t explain that to his son. Instead, he said, “Just a few more minutes. Do you need me for something?”
“I just wanted to play with you.”
He sounded so pitiful, and his brown eyes grew so wide that Alan melted immediately. “Why don’t you go find your sister and I’ll be down shortly.”
“OK,” his son perked up at the promise of a speedy fulfillment of his wish. Alan waited until the door was closed to put his things away and zip up his pants before heading downstairs to be with his children.
When he got downstairs, he found the two children sitting on the living room floor acting out the fable of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden using a Barbie doll for Eve, a Ken doll for Adam, a toy snake to represent Satan, and a stick to represent the tree of knowledge. Instead of holding the Barbie doll to act out the role of her namesake, Eve had the Ken doll and Adam had the Barbie doll. They often chose to switch roles like this, and Alan wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He watched as Eve manipulated the toy snake into talking the Barbie into taking an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, wagging the snake’s head back and forth with each word dutifully recited from the King James Bible until Adam manipulated Barbie into taking a bite from an imaginary apple. Then Eve walked the Ken doll up to Barbie to see what she was up to so he could take a bite of the apple himself.
Alan used his deepest, most powerful voice to recite God’s lines, but had trouble maintaining a straight face as he watched his children move the dolls back and forth in an imitation of trembling.
Once the scene had been played out and the dolls were banished from the Garden of Eden, Alan watched as his two children moved the dolls back and forth in an exaggerated imitation of walking, until the reached the edge of the carpet, which they had apparently designated as the border between the Garden of Eden and the rest of Earth. Then the dolls were thrown screaming across the living room floor.
Alan laughed as his children got up and ran over to him, but he made his voice sound stern as he reminded them of the importance of keeping their place neat and tidy. “After all, is it not our duty to do our best to create and maintain our own Garden of Eden?”
The children nodded, then collected their dolls and put them away. Alan picked up the stick that had been representing the Tree of Knowledge. “And where did this come from.”
“Outside,” Eve said, looking down at the floor.
“And does it belong outside, or does it belong in here?”
Eve hesitated.
“I asked you a question, Eve.”
“It belongs outside.”
“Then what is it doing in here?”
“We needed a Tree of Knowledge.”
“I see. So, like your namesake broke God’s law to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, you broke the rules of this house to bring the Tree of Knowledge into our home, even though it has no place here.”
Eve hung her head.
Alan held out the stick, which Eve took and, without another word, carried it to the window, which she opened so she could drop the stick out the window before shutting the window and turning back to her father.
“That’s my good girl,” he said, and her face broke into a grin as she ran into his open arms and hugged him.
Adam was watching them, his head cocked to one side and his brow furrowed as he tried to work through something in his head.
“What is it, son?”
“The Tree of Knowledge.”
“What about it?”
“It is inside this house.”
“What do you mean?”
“The internet.”
Alan was at a loss as to how to respond to that, so Adam continued. “It’s forbidden, which makes it like the Tree of Knowledge.”
“Yes, I suppose it is like the Tree of Knowledge,” said Adam. “Because like the Tree of Knowledge it is for your own good that you avoid the internet at all costs. You know that, right?”
Both his children nodded, and in unison they recited what he had always told them, “Because the internet is Satan’s playground.”
“That’s right.”
“But you use the internet.” “Only for work, and only because I have to. The Lord helps those who help themselves, and sometimes we need to use unsavory tools in order to do God’s work. Now go wash up for dinner.”
To be continued…