Age Of Innocence

Danny’s mom stuck her head out the front door and yelled “Danny, where are you?”

Danny always like to delay his response in an effort to get a rise out of her, having second thoughts, he quickly responded, “I’m over here by the corner post.”

She craned her head out the door and thought, as usual, he’s as far away from me as he can get.

”I’ll be in the back yard hanging clothes on the line, don’t leave this yard!”

Danny mumbles to himself, “I’m nine years old, I should at least be able to walk down the street to the corner store.”

Danny liked Mr. and Mrs. Guggenheim they owned the corner store, he didn’t know why, but everyone made a big deal about them being Jewish. Danny didn’t know what being Jewish was, but if it meant being kind, then he wanted to be Jewish too. Mrs. Guggenheim always gave him a free candy sucker and bragged to his mom what a good boy he was.

Danny decided he was going for it, he opened the yard gate and was almost to the store when he saw a package hidden in the bushes next to the store. He stopped dead in his tracks, because the one thing he hated more than being confined to the yard, was having to watch the national news each night with his parents, but there was one thing he had learned, unattended packages were dangerous.

Danny ran home and told his mom what he had found. She called the police and that night Danny was the National News. The caption read: Boy stops hate crime against Jewish couple.

Danny watched the TV and thought to himself, I really do need to find out what being Jewish means.