The throwing of snowballs
When Stanley heard the sound of one hand clapping, nobody else listened until a California Health Insurance agent decided to play along.
Because of his manipulative personality, his tendency to steal other children’s toys, and his predilection for tattling, other boys avoided eleven-year-old Stanley. When he was outside, he played solitary games like one-hand-clapping, and worse, he’d listen to that hand. Stanley’s mother, a single mom, could be accused of being overprotective, but she had contacted a widowed California Health Insurance agent named Ralph just to make sure her odd little cherub was covered by an individual child plan. This precaution seemed prudent, even prescient, once she started dating Ralph.
Let’s go camping up in the Sierras, Ralph announced one weekend. The three of them headed for a snow-covered campground in a rented SUV. After their tent was pitched, Stanley grew accustomed to the canvas structure’s fetid air and began his characteristic clapping game, which annoyed the heck out of Ralph. “Hey, let’s go out and throw some snowballs!” he announced. Pushed out into a winter wonderland as if re-emerging from the womb, Stanley, who had never really seen snow, began making a snowball with one hand. Ralph noticed. “You have to pack it – use your other hand,” he instructed. All too soon, Stanley had made his first-ever snowball. But instinctively returning to his familiar game, the one-hand-clapping, the uncoordinated snowball became a projectile and smacked Ralph surprisingly hard on the side of the face. Before he realized it, and because he assumed Stanley had meant to throw the snowball, Ralph retaliated with his adult strength. He may have thrown several. In any case, Stanley eventually screamed, “He broke my glasses! Ralph broke my glasses!”
Stanley’s mom drove at breakneck speed for forty miles out of that canyon until she made it to the nearest ER, hardly glancing at her newfound boyfriend.
Stanley had been cut below the left eye by a shard of glass, requiring three stitches. Afterwards, Ralph apologized. “I’m sorry kid,” he muttered.
Stanley was quick to forgive. “Want to play my game?” he asked. Ralph was initially repulsed, but decided, “Oh what the heck!” As the SUV sped along a narrow rural road somewhere north of Sacramento, two elusive hands chased each other while never touching.
Tags: California Health Insurance, Child Health Insurance, Snowball
