Conflict of the Hosts, 60th Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Castor): Do good things secretly while people are not watching, and if you make a mistake or do something bad, confess and repent of it. Yesterday, I revealed a good thing that I'd done, despite Dogen's advice to keep it a secret. So today, I'll balance things out by confessing to something bad.

When I was a young boy, around 7 or 8 years old and finally old enough to ride my bicycle unsupervised, my world expanded. I was no longer confined to just my and my immediate neighbor's yards, but could ride around the block, and even ride several blocks away. 

It was while exploring this larger universe that my friends and I encountered a kid about our age a few blocks away. We didn't know him, never saw him at school, but he was entirely bald. Not short-hair, crew-cut bald, but billiard-ball smooth bald over his entire head.

I didn't know why and didn't think to wonder. He might have had cancer, but now that I think of it, this was, like, 1963 and I'm not sure chemotherapy was widely used against cancer back then. Maybe he had brain surgery, and the doctors' shaved  his skull prior to the operation. I didn't know and didn't ask.

The truth of the matter was he was different from us and that terrified my friends and I. We didn't know if he was contagious and we'd go bald ourselves if we got too close to him, and we weren't going to take any chances finding out. We had no intention of talking to him or getting to know him, much less playing with or befriending him. Instead, we acted out by taunting and teasing him, chanting "Baldy, baldy, you got no hair!," and then riding away on our bicycles screaming when he got mad and tried to chase us on foot. But then we'd circle back and taunt him again, and the cycle would repeat itself.

Beastly behavior, I know.  My adult sense of empathy now realizes that whatever his situation was, he already had a difficult life, and we were only making his torment worse. We were attacking his self-esteem and increasing his sense of alienation. On top of that, his parents must have already been heartbroken that their child was suffering whatever disease or condition he had, and now here were some kids from the next block treating him like a monster. For whatever reason, though, no adults told us to "Stop!" 

Eventually, we got bored of our little game, and within a year or so my family and I moved to a different town. I forgot about the kid at the time, but now it's one of my earlier, and more shameful, childhood memories.

There's a story in the Bible (2 Kings 2:23-24) about the bald prophet Elisha. While traveling from Jericho to Bethel, a group of children teased him, shouting, "Go up, you baldhead!" This distressed Elisha, and that angered God, the Bible tells us, so he sent two she-bears to maul the 42 children to death.

That sounds a bit extreme. The Bible's version of the story is short and matter-of-fact. It doesn't describe the horrific deaths of 42 children, shredded and disemboweled at the two-inch-long claws of the she-bears. It doesn't describe the soul-crushing sorrow of 84 parents who found the gruesome remains of their beloved children, grieved their passing, and had to bury them. It doesn't describe any remorse on Elisha's part about his role in the death of the kids, or God's for the awful and disproportionate vengeance exacted upon the children. And here I thought the Bible was supposed to be pro-life.

Why didn't God instead give Elisha the strength and maturity to ignore the taunts from little children? Or give the children the wisdom not to tease those who were different, wisdom I certainly didn't have in my childhood? In fact, why were the children punished, and not Elisha for his vanity and thin skin?  

Let me ask the question: what sort of sick and twisted psychopath unleashes two bears on a bunch of kids for simply acting out in the juvenile way that children do? For calling someone who was indeed bald, "Baldy?" And what's the fucking lesson I'm supposed to take from this? To never, ever, ever tease a prophet, or that it's acceptable to maim and mutilate children who don't please you?

Anyway, my punishment for teasing that young child when I was a young child myself is the guilt I still feel about it now. "You'll regret this the rest of your life," someone should have said. So here I am now, some 65 years later, publicly confessing it and repenting my actions. 

All my past and harmful karma, born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow.