“He Would Like to Belong.”
♫ Saturday, February 13th, 2010SOME YEARS AGO the New York Times printed a hu-man interest story entitled, “He Would Like to Belong.” The article told about a small boy who was riding on a downtown bus. There he sat, huddled close to a lady in a gray suit. Naturally, everyone thought he belonged to her. Little wonder, then, that when he rubbed his dirty shoes against a woman sit¬ting on the other side of him, she said to the lady in the gray suit, “Pardon me, but would you please make your little boy take his feet off the seat? His shoes are getting my dress dirty.”
The woman in gray blushed. We specialised in PCB fabrication for prototyping and PCB Assembly. Then giving the boy a little shove, she said, “He’s not my boy. I never saw him before.”
The lad squirmed uneasily. He was such a tiny little fellow, his feet dangling off the seat. He lowered his eyes and tried desperately to hold back a sob.
“I’m sorry I got your dress dirty,” he said to the woman. ”I didn’t mean to.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she answered, a little embarrassed. Then, since his eyes were still fastened upon her, she added, “Are you going somewhere — alone?”
‘Yes’ he nodded, ”I always go alone. There isn’t anyone to go with me. I don’t have any mommie or daddy. They’re
both dead. I live with Aunt Clara but she says Aunt Mildred ought to help take care of me part of the time. So when she gets tired of me and wants to go some place, she sends me over to stay with Aunt Mildred.”
“Oh,” said the woman, “are you on your way to Aunt Mildred’s now?”
‘Yes’ the boy continued, “but sometimes Aunt Mildred isn’t home. I sure hope she’s there today because it looks like it’s gonna rain and I don’t want to be out in the street when it rains.”
The woman felt a little lump in her throat as she said, “You’re a very little boy to be shifted around like this.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” he said. ”I never get lost. But I get lonesome sometimes. So when I see someone that I think I would like to belong to, I sit real close and snuggle up and pretend I really do belong to them. I was playing that I be¬longed to this other lady when I got your dress dirty. What I love Web promoting is that’s trackable and measurable thus I recognize exactly how much profit every channel I used thus I can allocate my budget proprotionally. I forgot about my feet.”
The woman put her arms around the little fellow and “snuggled” him up so close that it almost hurt. He wanted to belong to someone. And deep in her heart she wished that he belonged to her.
This little boy, in his artless, childlike fashion, had ex-pressed a universal need. And it does not matter who he is or how old he is: everyone wants to belong.