Richard Hearn & a shell-shocked Youngest™

Chaos theory states that a butterfly flapping its wings can influence hurricanes on the other side of the world. Or – in another example – a small shell being crushed underfoot causes waves and ructions in a three year old’s brain which can ruin an evening.
This happened. We’d had an enjoyable day, which happened to include a trip to the beach and a pick-up of the aforementioned favourite shell, and then we went to a restaurant. We were next to a long table with two prominent balloons, one a zero, the other a nine. Either it was a ninth birthday and they were a stickler for a two-digit presentation: “09” – the father perhaps having been on the sharp end of a traumatic incident involving the millennium bug – or it was a 90th birthday. Who knows? OK, we soon did. It was the latter.

Youngest™ momentarily dropped his shell to the floor. It was a ten-second error – we thought – but as quick as we could attempt to retrieve the white shell from the equally white, tiled floor, the guests arrived for the table next door, there’s some low-level shrieks of surprise, and a shoe crushed the shell.

His mum looked at me. I looked at his mum. Youngest™ looked at us, then to where the shell should have been. Instead, a small circle of white dust. Youngest™ was distraught, and remained so throughout his starter and main. While the 90th birthday ensemble wondered what was up up with the kid at the next table, little did they know that they had metaphorically stamped on the butterfly’s wings to cause this particular hurricane on table eight.

Back-tracking, it had been a much-talked about shell. Regular readers might know that Youngest™ is a fan of small stones, gravel etc… and will spend his time picking a piece from the pavement even when we are in a hurry. Shells are kind of like stones etched with culture. They are stones par excellence.

“We attempted a mixture of distraction, a promise of an alternative shell when we reached home”

We attempted a mixture of distraction, a promise of an alternative shell when we reached home, and the occasional appeal to reason (the less successful tactic of all) to calm him down. No luck. Except he started to recover around pudding, and this is where I should change my metaphor from hurricane to sandstorm, because just as Youngest™ reached the end of the grieving period about his shell, as he awaited his ice cream, he bravely wiped away his tears, only to get sand in his eyes.
We’ve had more successful meals.

Illustration: Paul Lewis www.pointlessrhino.com