Image by Oleg Mityukhin from Pixabay
Things you get asked by precocious little boys considering their place in the world: “So, Cousin Harry, do you consider being a man of prestige important to your life?”
“Oh, we have decided I am a man of prestige, George?”
“Oh, come on, Cousin Harry. It's obvious!”
Mrs. Maggie Lee laughed gently at this walk-and-talk between her husband, Col. H.F. Lee, and their nine-year-old cousin George Ludlow.
“Oh, it is? So what makes for prestige, exactly, in your opinion? Remember that I shouted in church today until I fell out – that generally doesn't go with the definition, especially for us white people.”
“But that's my point. The Trents our friends respect you even more because they know how to give God the best, and nobody white holds it against you because you're real. That just gives you more prestige, not less, because that didn't just start today, and people still admire you!”
“So, we are defining prestige as respect and admiration?”
“Yep. I checked in the dictionary before we left the house, because Papa is bad about asking – if you use a big word, even if you are just Robert [who was just five], you had better be able to spell it and know what you are talking about.”
“Do you think your grandfather is a man of prestige?”
“Is he ever! I mean, people that just would hurt kids to just be doing it right up to big-time lawyers and judges had to get their lives together whenever he walked into the court and conference room and he houses we were living in! You know how he got all seven of us out of our situations and with him in less than two years, and down here, nobody bothers us at all!, and nobody dares mess with the Ludlow Bubbly! Papa's prestige covers us all!”
“So, I suppose it is important to be a man of prestige, provided you are taking care of your family and community with it.”
“I guess I did kinda answer my own question,” George said.
“You answered the general half. About the half that pertains to me: yes, I do find it important to be a man of prestige because prestige is an asset – something that generates value – that people can use to take care of people and things that are important to them.
“However, it is important to remember, George, that one can only keep and use prestige the same way one got it in the first place. A man has to do things that are worthy of respect and admiration to gain prestige, and to keep it for the use of doing even more things worthy of respect and admiration. It is also important to consider who one is getting prestige from, and for what. Criminals consider successful criminals as having prestige.”
“Oh, no!” George said. “I mean the real kind – the kind that comes with honor, the kind that doesn't have God coming along to smack the taste out of your mouth eventually. I knew this bully once – oh yeah, the other bad kids liked him and all, but then he got sick all of the sudden and went down to like 40 pounds in three weeks. You think anybody cared about him then?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not!”
“So, George, let's consider what we have learned. Being a man of prestige is important, provided it comes from the right people – including it being a blessing of God – and from doing the right things consistently with honor. It is to be used in order to do more of the right thing with more of the right people that your prestige lets you meet.”
“Got it. Now I know where I'm going. I have no idea how I'm getting there, but at least I know where I'll be when I got there!”
“You would be surprised how many people never even get that far, George. But keep doing the right thing in your schoolwork and loving your family … every journey, including that of becoming a man of prestige, begins with a series of small right steps, one after the other.”
“I bet you started young, too,” George said.
“I did not know where I was going,” the colonel said, “but I mastered small steps yes, putting my little feet into the footsteps of my grandfather, your Big Uncle Horace.”
“Just like I'm stepping into Papa's steps – and yours too, Cousin Harry!”
“Which helps me walk better, just knowing that, every day,” the colonel said, and then opened his arm and enjoyed a walking side squeeze before his little cousin was pulled right back into boyhood regularities.
“Hey, George – come this way – there's roadkill with real live maggots in it!”
That was nine-year-old Milton Trent, George's best friend also on the walk, precipitating all the girls on the walk going “Ewwwwwww!” and all the other boys going, “Where?”
“Well, so much for the journey toward prestige,” Mrs. Lee said to Mrs. Trent.
“They're young yet,” Mrs. Trent said as her daughters eleven-year-old Velma and eight-year-old Gracie came plowing into her to bury their heads and thus their eyes in her bosom.
“Forget prestige – what you need is common sense!” eight-year-old Edwina Ludlow said as Col. Lee and Milton's father Sgt. Vincent Trent intervened in time to keep Milton and George from actually touching the carcass.
“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said, her voice muffled in her mother's bosom.
Thank you!