Sean E. Britten

There’s a dead pigeon on the lawn and a little girl upstairs is screaming. I’ve heard her screaming before, they’re a good family, quiet most of the time, but that’s apartment living. Sometimes you’re going to hear kids screaming or people slamming furniture or whatever. Your mum goes out on the balcony to investigate and apparently the little girl found the pigeon in the park and brought it home where the babysitter forced her to leave it outside, so now she’s screaming and trying to throw herself off the balcony to go and get it. She wants to wrap it up in a warm towel and bring it inside, which I’m positive is a practical step she learned from watching ‘Bluey’, and is worried the other birds are going to eat it.

I’ll admit it’s not making it any easier to put you to sleep this evening but I hope you have some of that same energy when you’re a bit older. Compassionate, passionate, loud, fucking loud, not afraid to take up space, not afraid to make her voice heard. Not afraid to stand up to authority for what she believes in, authority in this case being a beleaguered teenage babysitter who is trying to stop her from jumping off a second story balcony. I mean, the pigeon is dead. The pigeon will still be dead. But the desire and belief that she can do something about it is still very real. I hope you’ll fight me just as hard if you think you need to.

But thinking about the future is a worry because so many passionate kids are taking a look at the state of the world and turning sullen and bitter and burnt out. And I get why. Like, personally, I don’t think the world is necessarily getting worse. I don’t think the numbers bear that out but there are plenty of very real problems with no real resolutions being created, and I get why it looks bleak through a lot of people’s eyes.

I think, or maybe I assume, that a lot of parents nowadays are braced for that question some day. Why did you even bring me into this shitty world? And the truth is, I wanted you to fix it. I wanted to fix it at one point but I’m old now, I’m tired, and truthfully I never had any good ideas about how to do that in the first place. So I had you and now I’m hoping to raise you well enough that you can fix the world instead.

I mean, I don’t expect you to fix the whole thing all at once. Just to make it a little bit better. To leave it a little bit improved before you’re old and tired too. Like Bob Marley said, “The people who are trying to make the world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?” Villains haven’t stopped breeding the next generation of little arseholes, I couldn’t just leave them to inherit the Earth without adding someone who was going to make it a little bit better?

And you know what? I think you’re nailing it so far. Just please, please, I know you want to help, but leave the dead bird outside when I tell you too, okay? The bird is dead, it’s not getting any better but I’m sure there’s some other animals we can help if you want, there always are.

P.S. The little girl upstairs, since time of writing, has repeatedly asked your mother to set things on fire for her. We’re a little concerned.