The Terrible Boy

If you haven't read this yet, read it now: THERE IS NOTHING ON THIS EARTH SO TERRIBLE AS A TERRIBLE BOY. A terrible boy has learned the specifics of cruelty without learning the generality of mercy. A terrible boy worships what is worst in himself and despises what is best. A terrible boy is alienated by his own sense of enmity and seeks connection through the certainties of slaughter. A terrible boy makes even ants his enemies, for he wishes above all to make his enemies ants--and to entertain himself by squashing them both. When a terrible boy closes his hand, he finds a fist; when he opens it, he finds a rock. So terrible are terrible boys that armies the world over have discovered the utility of using them to do their bidding. So terrible are terrible boys that aboriginal tribes used to dispatch them on impossible and solitary missions, hoping they would come back tempered by quest and grown into men. We, who demand something softer from our civilization, have no such uses for terrible boys and no such rituals. Instead, we call them bullies and by new and coming consensus seek to outlaw them.