The Magnify Glass
(a short story – short independent film)

Peter didn’t read much at all – he disliked books and didn’t pay much attention to that type of culture or really any culture at all unless it was liked by mainstream approval from his Carny-esque parents who would try and hock whatever wherever because they had that effect on people.
Peter, or Dick, as  his back slapping buddy system buddies luvingly called him also was well liked by people because, again, he didn’t do reading let alone “the outside the classroom reading” that makes you truly more of a scholar of academics and, well, life. Peter pretty much believed whatever gossip was being peddled by his friends, family relatives – whoever paid attention to him and take advantage of his blank slate, wet dish towel demeanor.
“Hey, Dick, take this magnify glass and burn that big black ant for me, honey” his mother requested. In which he did without even thinking.
Emery Wallace on the other hand, his mother who was very cultured and well educated, fair and just, would never make such a request in the first place. And, then again, Emery Wallace, was blessed by reading and thinking and developed high powered analytical skills which, sometimes to his detriment by the standards of the mainstream popularity entertainment/gossip machine goes, and almost intuitively would not the ethical consequences of misusing the magnify glass --- heat from the Sun would refract within the glass and cause extreme intense heat which would instantly fry any ant.
Moments of thought … Important here. And, well, if you don’t think and just, basically blindly listen and do the consequences can have a devastating unfair and unjust result. You play God. Emery Wallace a devout Catholic from a devout Catholic background believed in God and Jesus Christ. He knew the judge.
When he picked up a magnify glass, as a child, and saw the ants on his big patio filled with concrete, trees, annual flowers and bushes and perennial flowers and bushes with bushy roots, on a blue sky day with white fluffy clouds above him, it never even crossed his mind to victimize an ant. He studies his ancient coins from his lineage instead.

Written August 22, 2010
10:10 a.m.
By Giovanni Continelli