A sensitive soul, my son is

My second grade son is a sensitive fellow. I mean that in a good way, not that he cries or fusses easily. I got a glimmer of this side of him a few weeks ago when I was watching a TV special about the JFK assassination. I kept telling him it was too scary for kids, and for him to go out, but as usual that just piqued his interest. They ran the old videotapes of the television reporters breathlessly announcing that the president was dead, the footage of Jack Ruby lynching Oswald, all of it.

I finally turned it off and got him ready for his bath. He asked me a few questions about JFK and shooting and bad people, and seemed subdued. After I put him in the tub and left, I heard him crying softly. I didn't understand why at first, and like always he was reluctant to explain. But later on we talked some more, and he said that the program made him sad.

I believe that this was his first impression with evil, as opposed to mere childish meanness or discomfiture. He's interested in the Presidents, and he never understood before that Kennedy had been killed. The idea that someone could kill another person, especially a President, presented itself to him in its full ugliness, and his tender little soul recoiled at the thought.

I can't begin to imagine what he'll be when he grows up, only that I'm sure he'll grow up well.