On the train this weekend I had a few minutes to overhear the ideas of a young teenage boy - I'd guess he was thirteen - talking to a girl who could have been a sister or classmate or girlfriend. He was going a mile a minute, full of ideas. The one I overheard:
"I don't think people should have to go to jail if they're bad. If you want to obey the rules, you can stay here. But if you want to be bad, you have to go to a bad city, and you can do what you want there, but other people there will be bad to you. If you leave and come back here, you have to be good."
This is the sort of idea that bodes well for the kid's future, if he keeps it up. Plenty is wrong with the notion, but that's the point. Chasing down the flaws will lead him deeper and deeper in thought. Also, his idea of "bad cities" has a fine intellectual and literary pedigree, leading all the way back to cities of refuge, both as real places (in various guises) and as the lovely but daft notion in the Pentateuch that forgiveness could be made politically spatial.
On a different subject, note that there was no way for me to tell from a few short minutes if the kid is smart or not - that is, to tell his intelligence. All I know is that he is thoughtful. And that is a more meritorious thing than intelligence. Of course, I hope for his sake he has the whole mental kit.
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