Forbidden

I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

I scramble up onto Mom’s lap and look into her big blue eyes. “What can I be when I grow up?” I ask.

“You can be anything you want to be,” Mom says with a smile as big and beautiful as the horizon.

Suddenly my mind is teeming with possibilities. Anything means anything. Where would I even begin?

“But,” she says, “you cannot be a giraffe.”

What? I can’t be a giraffe? Now that’s all I can think about! I didn’t know what I wanted to be until this very moment, and before I even had a chance to dream, it’s all been taken away from me. I want to be a giraffe. No. Now I need to be a giraffe. There is nothing else.

I attempt to abandon contemplations of a long neck stretching, stretching oh so far. I bid musings of a black tongue darting out for juicy leaves to leave and never return. I forbid myself daydreams of a life in the Sub-Saharan wilderness.

Every perfect spot. Those weird little nub things on the top of their heads. Their graceful gallop loping on the savannah. Everything about giraffes cleaves itself permanently to my inner being, my very soul. I know I must be a giraffe when I grow up, or I will never be truly happy.

I look up at Mom, and she is still smiling down upon me. She would be heartbroken if she knew the truth. So I just smile and say, “Wow! That’s great, Mom.”

But I stretch my neck out a little whenever she’s not looking.