Messo had never known his parents. The mistress of the orphanage told him they had died when he was a baby. He always imagined they had only pretended to die to protect him from a bad person.
From the moment Messo could talk, his teachers knew he was precocious. He learned shapes, numbers, letters, and words faster than any of his peers. He was reading picture books by himself by the time he was three years old. At five, he was doing multiplication and division in his head.
His peers noticed the differences too.
“No,” Messo insisted. “If you turn that block, it fits.”
“I’m going to play something fun,” the other child responded.
Try as he might, Messo could not relate to the other orphans beyond knowing that they didn’t have a family either.
One day, two people came into the orphanage.
“Messo,” a woman said, showing him a picture. “What do you see in this picture?”
“Dots, ma’am,” Messo said.
The woman shook her head and stood.
“A man is riding on a horse through those dots,” Messo said.
The woman sat back down.
“Why did you paint the man and the horse using dots?” Messo asked.
“We’d like you to come with us,” a man said, stepping into the room. “You will learn the answer to that question and to many others.”
“But my parents will come here looking for me. How will they find me if I go with you?” Messo asked.
“Our Guild will help them find you if they come,” the woman assured him.
Instead of teaching Messo, however, the Setreed Information Guild put him in with their other young recruits, doing chores in the house and garden. When they did get to go to class, their teachers just gave them sheets of numbers, letters, or words and then left them without explanation or supervision. Some of his fellow recruits sat confused and cried. Others took fresh sheets of paper and just copied the material their teachers had given them. Messo, however, just stared at the materials. A few mocked him, standing behind him and staring over his shoulders at his sheets.
When the teachers returned, they took away the children who had cried. Messo never saw them again. They kept the children who had copied in the room. A teacher took Messo and a few others to another room and asked them each just one question: “Why didn’t you do something with the materials we gave you?”
When it was Messo’s turn, he answered, “I did do something.”
“What did you do?” the teacher asked.
“The pages contained nonsense, so I memorized them,” Messo said, and recited the materials, word for word and number by number.
“You are special,” the teacher said.
“I now believe they aren’t just nonsense,” Messo said. “I think they mean something, but I don’t know what.”
“Go through that door now,” the teacher said. “We’d like to help you do more things that you find fun.”
Messo stepped out of the room and into his new life, never again to have the chance to learn how to play with children his own age.
Discussion Invitation
Messo is a hopeful, curious, trusting child. How might the Information Guild have helped Messo to develop his gifts without taking away his childhood? Where have you seen parents push their children to develop and use their talents at the expense of enjoying a childhood?