A Glimpse

"People like to blame our government but when are we going to see the corporations as the true megalomaniac monsters. I want you guys to examine all the ways that you might be manipulated by our corporate culture and make a list right now, off the top of your head. Go." The room was quiet as everyone wrote in their notebooks. "Once you start to see these things you'll spot them everywhere. I want you guys to grow up making informed choices and not just blindly going along with the herd," Mr. George said, circling the room, smelling of cologne. Mr. George was Sylvie's favorite teacher. He always wore a white shirt and skinny black tie with a thin silver tie clip and he had an ebony and silver dot of an earring in his left earlobe. He was like a mountain goat sometimes climbing on top of the desks for dramatic effect.

One day Sylvie got a glimpse of the tops of his fancy black cowboy boots. There were bits of red and yellow and turquoise-colored inlaid leather. She sometimes liked to imagine, while fading off to sleep, solving the world's problems arm-in-arm with Mr. George. "Last week I dreamed I ran into Mr. George on his summer vacation. He was playing volleyball with a group of friends in the mountains. He was half-goat, half-man, and he wore red plaid seersucker shorts, his goat legs poking out. I realized why he wore cowboy boots at school, to hide his secret," she told Dr. Brown.
"What secret is that?" Dr. Brown asked.
"That he's half goat! He'd have to hide his hooves," Sylvie said.
"What does that mean to you?" Dr. Brown asked, leaning back.
"He's clever and quick and mysterious. He's cute! And anyway I always wanted to be like Heidi and live in the Swiss Alps and raise goats."
"Um hmm." Dr. Brown scribbled some notes with his green pen. Dr. Brown wrote in red, blue, and green pens depending on what Sylvie was telling him. But she never asked him him why he chose a particular color.