End the War on Freedom

by George Potter
[from here]

For seven years the sawhorse sat in a single spot. It was in a grass free patch of dirt and gravel, just behind the house, where the first hint of a hill let those seven years be spent at a gently crooked angle.

The boy was born five days after the sawhorse had been placed by the man in its seemingly eternal crooked spot.

Seven years, and the sawhorse witnessed a lot. The boy witnessed more, because eventually he could run around and change perspectives. The sawhorse had a couple of advantages, though. It wasn't limited to eyes that had to blink, and limited to a partial cone. It saw with every inch of its body, a visual sphere of a gently crooked universe. The sawhorse had no need for sleep.

The boy ran and made noise about the yard, while the sawhorse stood and watched everything in it's vision field. It watched seasons pass and weather work it's slow crumbling magic on the world around. Blue skies, and clouds. Bugs and little animals and leaves swarmed around it. Rain and snow and pounding light wore at it.

Sometimes the man would come and place objects against the sawhorse and cut them in half. This was an occasional but interesting thing. Sometimes the boy would come and sit on the sawhorse, dangling his legs in precarious balance, or lean his whole weight against it as if exercising his young and healthy muscles in the sheer joy of motion. This was more frequent and, truth be told, even more interesting.

One day the boy came to the sawhorse holding the tool that the man used to cut things with. The boy spoke to the sawhorse, a simple little speech that would puzzle the object for many days to come.

"I see you sitting there, Mr. Sawhorse, and I figure you must me mighty bored after all this time in one place. I know I'd be mighty bored. First I figured I'd just move you, but then I got to thinking. After all this time you might get homesick for your spot here in the back yard. So I came up with another plan."

And with that formality out of the way, the boy proceeded to cut the sawhorse in half. He did a pretty good job at judging the center, and the sawhorse felt no pain as the saw separated it into two distinct entities.

The division complete, the boy drug one half of the sawhorse around to the other side of the house, into the front yard, where he placed it in a corner near the fence.

Revelation and astonishment! For the sawhorse an entire new aspect of the universe was revealed. It now had two focal points from which to study the world. No longer was it confined to light when light came, and shade when shade came. One half was in the sun, the other half in the shade. It no longer had to ponder at what lay beyond the barrier of the house. Two viewpoints made the world even more interesting and mysterious and lovely!

If the sawhorse had speech, it would have thanked the boy profusely.

That night the boy got a fierce whipping for ruining a perfectly good sawhorse.