My belief in the goodness of the world was destroyed (if it ever really existed) in a single Sunday, between noon and bedtime.

On our way to the theater, our car ride was interrupted by a 2-year old, making his way unaccompanied down a sidewalk along a busy city street. "That can't be right," one says to oneself, and double takes, making sure that the small boy is not a midget or illusion but a real 2-year old. The car is turned around.

We rounded the small child up like a dog; he was terribly afraid of us. I knelt down and said, "Where do you live?" But, like a dog or a 2-year-old, he didn't understand the language. He only looked at me, decided to turn and escape. I followed him closely as he wobbled along, my friends triangulating to keep the kid from running into the street. I soon lapsed into dog talk, yelling coaxingly but commandingly, "Go home! Go home!" Which he did, eventually. We ended up in a yard with plastic playground equipment, and I had to knock on a door, half ajar, and ask the family inside if they had a small, dark-haired child in a red flannel and squat Levi's, because we had chased one to their yard from the busy street nearby.

"Oh, yes, thank you," they said. It wasn't good enough. I should be on the news or something for this; they should be arrested, shouldn't they?

The projector at the theater was down, our movie plans, ruined. So much candy purchased to smuggle inside would go to waste. I kicked the gravel in the parking lot.

"Remember when we saved that kid?" someone said.

We all laughed; that was crazy. That kind of thing doesn't happen.

I talked to my dad on the phone that night and he told me about a movie called "Radio." I remembered that Cuba Gooding Jr. existed and I wanted to cry. "It's good, but predictable," my dad said. I nodded into the phone.

My friend and I walked around the neighborhood later that night and I wished I had a dog. I would be so good with a dog! A small dog. Up, around and on fences and streetlights were posters people had made because their own dogs and cats were gone. Probably allowed to wander off to busy streets or scary back alleys. One poster was for a missing green parrot, and I only hoped that he had been able to fly when he broke free, because another sad thing is that people clip wings. I thought of the six or so lost pets in my neighborhood and I wondered where they were, probably dead, having been insufficiently guarded from the awful world by their people.

People are horrible with their responsibilities. Projectors aren't properly maintained. Children aren't guarded. Small domestic animals wander the streets. All anyone can do is round up the 2-year-olds they find, return them to their parents, eat handfuls of candy in their own living room, watch TV until sleep. Don't try to go to the movies.