978-1572305441

A Ernest Mind Apart
Chapter 10
Ernest
The View from the Bridge
Ernest is five years old. He has curly brown hair, is slightly
pudgy in a cute way, and has very large brown eyes that seem to take in
a lot. He loves to wear striped shirts and to visit the canal on the outskirts
of town so he can spend an hour or so dropping stones off the
bridge. In winter, he can become quite upset if the water ices over and
the stones no longer make the sound he likes when they hit the surface.
He cries, gets agitated, and sometimes will bite his hand in frustration.
His parents have learned to avoid the bridge on particularly cold days,
when the ice is thick. He also collects smooth pebbles at the canal’s edge
and takes them home, where he aligns them on his shelf in intricate patterns.
Ernest enjoys playing on the computer but spends most of his
time playing blackjack against it, which is remarkable given his age. His
father says with some pride that if he played in a casino he would win a
lot of money.
Ernest is very active, even for a five-year-old. He is so active, in fact,
that he is often up at night and insists on keeping his parents awake by
coming into their room, pulling off the blankets, and indicating that he
wants to watch videos. As a result, they are both thoroughly exhausted—Ernest’s
father works frequent shifts at the local factory, and
his mother has a younger child to look after. They’ve tried reprimanding
him for this behavior, but that has had little effect, so now they have put
an Etch A Sketch in his room, which he happily plays until at least 6:00
A.M., when it’s time to get up for school.
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