Steve walked to the mailbox and keyed open the door.  He pulled out the small pile of paper and recognized that it was mostly junk.  As he walked back to his house he noticed a flyer for improved cable service by his provider.

He had considered upgrading his seemingly dated service for quite some time, but had a hard time justifying the extra expense. He also understood through experience that often whenever he had more of something, it just meant that more could go wrong.  Like the last time when he upped his cell phone service and he was laid off at work.  For no reason except money his employer destroyed his life.  He had worked faithfully, hard, and long and was booted without a second glance.  The contract that he was under with his phone service nearly did him in financially and the company wouldn’t cancel the contract but for hefty sums.  But the cable company was offering a significant upgrade at a very reasonable rate that held for an entire year.  And this time around, he was more prepared for the commitment.

He called up the company and spoke with a sales staffer right away.  He referenced the flyer and the man helped set him up with his new service very quickly.  Steve carefully wrote down the anticipated payments, terms, expiration, the time and the date, and the name of the salesperson who helped him.  Through experience, again, he knew that this information was invaluable for when he would inevitably have to revisit the contract when his bill was wrong.

Sandy sat down at her station and logged in.  Almost immediately, she was on the phone.  She was still getting the last few passwords typed while she answered.  Her young son David had spilled juice all over her right before she dropped him off at the sitter’s.  She had to go all the way back home to change before she went to work.

So she was already late, again, and had just made it through the gauntlet of stares when she arrived at her station.  And it was a mess.  The last shift had not cleaned up, again, and she was forced to do it on the fly.  Not sooner had she begun, simultaneously logging in, when she was forced to answer her first call of the night.  It gave her a stomach ache.

Some guy on the other line was railing and cursing at her about his phone bill.  Of course, she had not been a part of the service change at all, but that didn’t matter to him.  When she finally got him settled down enough to extract information and look up his account, she realized that he was right about everything.  She tried to explain how there was an error in the programming and that I.T. was aware of it and that he was not the only person to have a bad bill.  It didn’t work.  In fact, it only fanned the flames.  The problem was, she wasn’t able to correct it either.  She took care of the bill, but that was not enough.  He wanted more.  And it ruined her already miserable night.

David was not a big kid.  Adults thought that it was cute.  Big kids did not.  They only saw opportunity.  He was already outnumbered three to one and on foreign turf.  School was one kind of animal, and the sitter’s was another.  Neither worked out well for him.  He wished his mom didn’t have to work nights.

The math test earlier in the day made him feel smaller than even his size reflected.  Then, when he was enjoying the few minutes of peace in the car, when he and his mom could both equally sit in quiet dread before their daily storms, he accidentally spilled his favorite drink on his mom’s shirt.  She unleashed an overarching fury on him and it didn’t matter how he scrambled to the napkins to clean it up.  It didn’t matter that he apologized over and over.  She didn’t hear him and she didn’t care.  He had made her late for a place she hated.

The three-headed monster, or rather, Joey, Sam, and Greg, made their way across the back yard where David swung on the swingset.  David slowed down so that they couldn’t knock him off the high seat.  David then jumped off and walked briskly towards the big tree.  It was his safe place.  The trunk was so wide that it did them no good to get behind him.  Then, there was the stick that he had placed earlier close by where only he could get to it.

The boys meandered over to David and were forced to face him.  Sam was the first to start the insults.  But he was not the real threat.  He only sung to impress the other two.  Greg was the real threat, but not because he was the biggest, but rather, he was the second in command.  He would do anything he had to for the approval of Joey, the leader.  Since Greg was a little smaller than Joey, he felt that he had something to prove too.  Joey was the biggest and he was the one who was always in control.  Joey was the only one who could end the torment.  And he refused to, for it was exactly this torment that gave him power over the others.

David knew what he had to do.  Like clockwork, Joey started casual conversation.  It was diminutive, but not damaging.  Then Sam chimed in with a zinger about David’s shorts.  Then Greg pushed him once, half-playfully, but hard.  David took his cue, grabbed the stick, and smacked Joey over the side of the head.  Joey stumbled backward in shock and fell down.  David continued to pound Joey with the stick as he curled up into a ball.  Sam ran away screaming and Greg didn’t know what to do.  He waited for orders that never came and soon was more afraid of David than he was of Joey.

The stick finally broke and David tossed it aside.  He then started to kick Joey while he was audibly crying and rolling to get away.  David then jumped on Joey and yelled, punching him about the head and body.  The sitter ran, arms flailing towards the boys and ripped David off of Joey.  Joey stayed balled up in the fetal position, bleeding and wimpering.  The sitter grabbed David hard by the arms, but he yanked away.  She asked him what he thought he was doing.

David only replied, ” He started it!”

There was a man who had two sons.  The one requested his inheritence and squandered it selfishly thereafter.  Not much time past before he came back to his father, repented and asked for a job with the servants.

His father embraced his son, ordered his servants to cook a feast and celebrated throughout the night.

The other son went to his father and asked why, after all of this time of working faithfully, never asking for anything, was he not offered such a festival?

His father replied that he never gave to his son, because he nothing to give that didn’t already belong to that son.  But his other son had left but now returned; was lost and now was found.