Can a 5-year-old with sharpened teeth tell the story of grown men? If you give him a talented author and illustrator, 30 pages and 60 words, why, yes. Yes, he can. David Shannon wrote “No, David!” nearly three decades ago. He based it on a book he made and illustrated as a child. The only words in it were “no” and “David.” Who can’t relate?
No, you can’t write your name on the wall in crayon (or urine, for that matter). Reaching for out-of-the-way treats could lead to a nasty fall. They’re out-of-the-way for a reason. And, no, you can’t track your mud into the house, the home your mother or wife is trying hard to make a safe place for you. You can go to war all you want, but you flood the bathroom or otherwise destroy, and people will likely tell you, “No.”
You can run away from home, naked, and believe you’re free. Leave the family home, the dog and hit the highway.You can join up, get a set of epaulettes, and make a cacophony of noise, but you’ll only further deafen yourself, drowning out all the nos you’ve been hearing all your life. You can play with your food, play with people, laugh even, but someone is going to tell you no. Your appetite is out of control, and who’s talking about food? The alcohol, the drugs, the mindless, fruitless binge watching, the using of human beings as the receptacle for your excesses, it’s all too much.
You finally find some idol you can look up to and you’re ostracized from the family, told to go to your room. So, you get angry. Very angry. You create a scene in the bedroom, wearing a cape and red high-heeled boots. You don your purple mask and bare your sharpened teeth. It isn’t because you’re entering some South American or African tribal beauty contest for the most eligible bachelor. No, you’ve been hurt. Hurt very badly. And you will act out most aggressively when you’re told to settle down. Children will be upended.
When you do something really ugly, like pick your nose, you will be commanded to stop. But the look in your eyes says you won’t. In fact, being told to stop will only fuel your desire to flaunt the debauchery and hurt others in turn. You will have everything good in life to enjoy, every toy a boy or a man could want. You can be anything you want, do anything you want, but you’ll be staring into the abyss, desiring the strange. On the one side are the upside down horrors of the true nature of the world, on the other the love and inclusion of family. You can’t see because you’re mesmerized, entranced by the exotic on the other side of the screen, unobtainable and ultimately unsatisfying.
You finally walk up to the plate of your life and decide to play ball in a home filled with breakable lives and hearts, human and animal. And they break. You break them because you’re broken. If you’re picked, you will feel remorse, sitting and crying amidst the shattered pieces. If you are chosen, you will finally lift your arms up to the sky with a remorseful heart and the desire to be loved and forgiven. If you are blessed like David, perhaps the concept of a fatherly love comes through the warm acceptance of a mother’s loving embrace, protective of head and back, safe, home.
“No, David” is a child’s book with wisdom far beyond its supposed audience. Maybe it was written for men who don’t like to read. Maybe it was written for those women who are woefully ignorant of how the world really operates and what men actually go through. Worry makes them hard, when nurturing would help heal their men and marriages. Because being loved for who you really are without the masks, no matter what you’ve suffered or done, brings a peace and contentment that is out of this world.
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