HOT-DIGGETY-DOG
It was a test for me and it was a test for him.
It went across to his hotdog stand and put it to him straight. He was an average specimen of humanity, with big blackheads on the end of his bulbous nose.
“Listen,” I said. “I haven’t eaten for forty days and forty nights and I am in sore need of a hotdog. Unfortunately I don’t have any money. If you let me have one for free the angels will sing for joy.”
Perhaps I should also have told him how the angels would feel if he didn’t give me one. But if I had, he would have been acting under duress and the test would have been invalidated.
I won’t soil this page by telling you what he said.
That was his part in the test over and he had failed it; now my part began. I could feel the power welling up inside me. If I had chosen I could have had those hotdogs levitate off the counter into my fist. But I resisted. I knew it would be a betrayal of the power to use it for any selfish end.
Then I spun on my heel and proclaimed “To him who shows no mercy, no mercy will be shown.” And I pointed my most powerful finger at the hot dog stand and blew it into itsy-bitsy pieces.