Fate

One of the founding fathers of American psychology in the late nineteenth century was the great William James at Harvard. One of his lesser known contributions was his sponsoring of the awarding of a doctorate in psychology to a Russian immigrant named Boris Sidis. As a way of saying thank you to James, Sidis decided to make his newborn son “William James Sidis” a genius by using the psychological techniques he had learned at Harvard. He was incredibly successful, and Bill Sidis was doing things like teaching himself Greek at age five (he later would enroll at Harvard at age 12). But although little Bill had the brain of an adult, he had the emotions of a child. When the family took a vacation in upstate New York, Bill sat down for breakfast one morning and, after examining the menu, ordered. The waiter told him that, unfortunately, they were out of what Bill had requested. The enraged little boy had to be carried away by his father as the child screamed over and over “But it is written! It is written!” like some Old Testament prophet.

It is written.

Fate.

Sometimes I wonder.

I have a birdhouse out back. It’s meant for purple martins, but after two seasons of availability it has not attracted any. I did see a male martin checking it out in the early spring, but he decided to go elsewhere. Instead I have a couple of apartments worth of house sparrows. I hate house sparrows and call them “cockroach sparrows.” They’re not pretty, they don’t sing, and they’re dirty. Their nests are extremely disheveled, unlike the tidy purple martins and their nests of mud and leaves.

I was sitting on my back porch recently and noticed that there was a piece of straw or string hanging from one of the sparrow apartments. Then I saw it wiggle. I realized it was a baby sparrow who had fallen out of the nest, and was hanging by it’s head on the birdhouse railing. Even though I don’t like the birds, I felt some responsibility for the poor creature. So I got a broom and gently pushed the little fledge back into his house.

Twenty minutes later the same chick popped out of the house, over the ledge, and fell all the way to the ground. The dog ate it.

It is written.