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What to do with a devil child? (1)
Source: Inquirer
Author: Constantino C. Tejero
Date: 2000-03-27
 
ALAIN and Lulubelle P. have a nice stone-and-wood cottage surrounded by flowering plants in a tree-shaded Quezon City subdivision. New in the community, they found the neighbors amiable, and soon they were invited to join Couples for Christ.He is a graphics artist and she a documentary filmmaker. Their nine-year-old son Jigo is in Grade 3 in a Catholic school a walking distance from their cottage.



A neighboring family--a pastor and his wife and their two sons--had a PlayStation. The younger boy, 11-year-old Joshua, would spend hours with the neighborhood kids whooping and yelping over the video games.



''He is like the Pied Piper of Hamelin,'' Lulubelle said. ''He lures the other kids with his PlayStation, and he uses it for emotional blackmail, to keep the other kids hostage, to make them toe the line. You see, anyone who does not obey or follow what he says, anyone posing a threat to his leadership, would not be allowed to use his PlayStation.''



Jigo wasn't aware at first of the rules of the game. What's more, he was ''malakas ang dating,'' particularly for a newcomer. Though two years younger, he often stood up to Joshua. So, one day, he found himself ostracized by the neighborhood kids. That is, no one talked to him, and they never invited him to join their games.



Even the adults in the community noticed the ostracism, and tried to reconcile the two boys. It took several weeks before the two became friends again. This time, Joshua had become oversolicitous, and Jigo would leap at his beck and call. Lulubelle found this quite disturbing.



A moral question



Joshua had quite a reputation among his peers, which they related to their parents, thus blowing that reputation out of proportion. The PlayStation was, as one might say, just an accessory to his power. For one, his father is a pastor, revered in the community, which reverence rubs off on the son. For another, the boy was adventurous, ingenious, flamboyant, even daring, which the other kids find admirable, even fascinating.



Lulubelle insists this isn't just something political (a power struggle among kids), psychological (peer pressure), or sociological (the master-slave relationship), but, foremost, moral -- a battle of good versus evil.



Should kids this young be subjected to adult morality, then? Why, they're not even into their teens yet. They may have still undeveloped or twisted notions of right and wrong, or none at all. These have to be developed in the sense that the ego has to develop.



One can understand if Lulubelle sounds hysterical, as she is a mother. But one is also aware that the supposed innocence of children is a myth, that children are also capable of so much evil, as creepily shown in two literary classics--Lillian Hellman's ''The Children's Hour'' and Henry James' ''The Turn of the Screw.''



The stalking moon



Joshua's capacity for evil was confirmed to Lulubelle by several incidents that gave her the creeps.



One time, on the first day of school, when asked by the teacher to tell his classmates his name, Joshua turned to the class and tossed the word nonchalantly: ''Devil.''



During religion class, he would fidget in his seat, secretly turn his back to the teacher and make a face to some classmates, and declare how bored he was with the subject.



On weekend afternoons, Lulubelle would see the kids playing in an empty lot, but what she finds reprehensible is the violence of the game. They are, in fact, reenacting action sequences from the PlayStation, splatter games like Quake, Doom, Resident Evil, DukeNukem.



Joshua would assign roles, who would play Anarki, who would play Nemesis. At his signal, the opponents would hurl their little bodies and bang their little heads at one another like so many battering rams. Jigo would come home black and blue, and again and again she would order him not to play these games, but again and again he would return to the arena.



Shocking news



One afternoon, in one of her forays into Kamuning, she found a little Limoges ware at an incredible bargain price. Going home euphoric that evening, she almost dropped the fragile piece on the flagstone path when Jigo approached her panting and told her a most shocking piece of news.



That afternoon, the kids had been looking for Joshua all over the place, when they came upon an empty metal drum lying around in a deserted area. When they peered inside, they discovered Joshua trying to sodomize another boy. There was a commotion among the children, but Joshua sternly warned them not to tell their parents.



''He is evil, evil,'' Lulubelle said. ''He is an evil child. He is a tool of Satan. Or else, how would you explain what he did to that boy inside the drum? He himself has claimed his name is Devil. What irony, considering that his father is a pastor.''



That night, Lulubelle fell into hysterics, shaking Jigo by the shoulders and asking if Joshua had ever done it to him. Had he touched him in a strange way? Had he pulled down his briefs, even playfully? Jigo said no, no, no. He almost broke into tears.



She is looking forward to the two months of summer when she would send Jigo to vacation with his cousins in Bacolod, so she'd have a respite from her daily anxieties. This early, the neighborhood kids are planning to hold a despedida party around a bonfire to send Jigo off. She overheard Joshua talking about having some shandy for the party.



A parallel life



As Alain said to her, they couldn't do anything about it unless they move to another neighborhood. For now they have to live with the fact that their son has to grow up with a boy like Joshua.



What is to be done with such a boy? A child, after all, is not a piece of bric-à-brac that you can just mold firmly with your hands, or display on the étagère, or will shatter at the slightest touch.



This recalls that famous line from classical literature: What is to be done with Alcibiades?



He was an Athenian statesman and general, nephew of Pericles and disciple of Socrates. He was ''distinguished by his birth, wealth and spectacular personal beauty, who spent his youth in lavish display and debauchery,'' his exploits recorded by no less distinguished personages as Plutarch in ''Parallel Lives,'' Plato in his ''Dialogues,'' and Aristophanes in ''The Clouds.''



Plato relates how several times Alcibiades tried to seduce Socrates, but the master, known for his stony self-control, always rejected the pining lover.



(to be continued)
 

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