introducing...mister mike.

The world's greatest logical mind.

(That I can imagine without the help of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha....)

The world's most desirable bachelor.

(Under the age of 6 years and 245 days.)

The hope of nations.

(Actually, the hope of the neighborhood of Sunset Ridge.)

Who solves everyone's problems.

(At least, he helps everybody who doesn't make him late for his t-ball game.)

Master of Socratic debate. Lover of root beer. Bruce-Lee-esque karate genius. Mozart-esque musical prodigy.

Unsuspecting world, meet Mister Mike. I'll let him do the rest of the talking:

Most people don’t realize the kind of work us children do to keep the adult world running smoothly.

             Even more people don’t realize the kind of work some children do to try to sabotage all niceness in the world.

            Nobody realizes that, in every neighborhood, every kid under the age of 6 years and 245 days is involved in one of the biggest underworlds the world has ever not seen.

             My name is Mikey MacDonald (age four), but in the underworld of the suburban neighborhood of Sunset Ridge (called ‘the S.R.’ by us kids), I’m often called Mister Mike, master detective. You see, even in my neighborhood of relatively small organizations for both crimefighting and crimedefending, the kids need a detective who will look at the world with a cool logical eye and skip the rose-colored lens in order to get to truth. I hold my office in the yellow-walled blue-roofed plastic playhouse in the backyard. I usually charge 5 cents an hour, plus expenses and plus laundry tax (everybody knows how parents raid the laundry for spare change), but I occasionally just take in a case because it is particularly stimulating.

             My exploits are many and varied. It was after I had won a considerable reputation that the Lady Lilly came to me with a deep problem.

             Lady Lilly is a famous beauty. She’s one of those models from the black-and-white greeting cards—you know, the ones where there’s the boy and the girl in frilly white clothing on a beach or in a Victorian garden, usually holding hands. Anyways, her arrival made waves in the Sunset Ridge kid underworld. Every boy who had ever seen one of his grandma’s black-and-white cutesy greeting cards went to get her autograph.

             She had been in the neighborhood for a while and things had slowed down to a very slow pace when she came to see me. It was raining outside my office, and she came in wet and soaking. I gave her some of my signature grass-and-leaves stew. It warmed her up instantly.

             After a few moments of the necessary punctilios, she brushed her golden curls out of her face and looked earnestly into my eyes.

         “Mister Mike,” says she, “I have a problem.”

           “Is it one that requires mere reasoning power or extensive investigation?”

             “Mere reasoning power, Mister Mike.”

             “No charge, then, unless I’m late for my t-ball game.”

            “I’ve been reading Thomas Aquinas’ argument of Gradation of Being and how our standards of perfection ultimately come from God.”

             “Of course. Standard reading around these parts, miss.”

             “Well, I disagree—with him, not that the argument is standard reading. I believe standards are created by society. Beauty is defined by the beauty of the day.  What books to read are decided by the elite of society. Other standards we create ourselves. For example, each of us has different temperaments. You like the cool, logical side of the world. I, on the other hand, prefer frilly white dresses and my modeling. Our standards of happiness are different. Society functions as a body formed of many individuals, and thus each body as a whole has different standards for beauty and truth. It is just like your preference drinking root beer and my preference for smoking licorice. Are the body of society’s standards of beauty so different from a single individual’s standards of enjoyability?”

             I at once was taken aback by the lady’s eloquence and composure. But even Lady Lilly’s smooth tongue could not trump cold logic.

             “Mind if I ask you a few questions about what you just said, miss?” I took a cold draught of root beer. Root beer always gives one an edge in conversations such as this.

            “Of course not.” She gave me her most beautiful smile.

             “You say we each have different standards for what happiness is, correct?”

             “Yes, Mister Mike.” Another smile. The flirt. The very, very gorgeous flirt.

             “But what makes happiness so good, might I ask?”

             “Happiness is when we find total satisfaction in what we are doing. Satisfaction is good.”

             “Noble attempt, noble attempt. But can we find true satisfaction in just one thing? Do you find your life’s satisfaction in dressing in frilly white dresses? Does it last?”

             “No. I’m sometimes even sad when I put on white dresses because of something else.”

             “Do you still hold to your original definition of happiness?” I raised my eyebrows with that debonair attitude which my grandma absolutely loves.

             “Yes.” Surprisingly, that debonair attitude did not have the desired effect. Must have been an off day.

             “Then what causes happiness?”

             “Finding that we measure up to a certain standard we have set in a particular area.”

             “Give me an example.”

             “I find some…” she looked at me with wary brown eyes, “small measure of happiness when I find my frilly white dress is perfectly clean.”

           “Where did you get this standard of perfection?” I took another sip of root beer.

             “From looking at dirty dresses.”

             “No, you did not. If anything, you’ve gotten it from knowing those dresses are dirty. Try again, Lady Lilly.”

            “From…from seeing a perfect dress?”

             “But what made that dress perfect?”

             “It was beautiful,” said Lady Lilly, smiling that beautiful smile.

             “And where did you get that idea of beauty?”

             “I…I…society, of course.”

             “You say society is like a person, right?”

             “Yes,” she replied, brightening.

             “Where did that larger person get their standards?”

           “Society before it, of course….no…oh, I don’t know…wait! Yes! That! That and that society is looking for an absence of ugliness! That’s it!”

             “What is ugliness?” 

            “Err…”

            “Ugliness is the absence of beauty. You have probably never seen something in which no trace of beauty can be found. As a matter of fact, some of the most ugly things—some of the most dirty frilling white dresses—are so ugly because they have such potential beauty. And if we say that society gets its standards of beauty from the society before it, we’ll keep running in circles. We’ll keep saying, ‘Oh, from the society before it.’ What we need is an infinite society, the society in which there was always the standard, the society which imparts its standards onto every society to come after it: namely, the Trinity.” 

             She eventually came round and then we had a few more bowls of grass-and-leaves stew followed by hearty mud pies. Then, after I obtained a promise from her to join me for a three-course dessert on my family’s back porch (a bag of six cookies divided between the two of us, of course), she departed, saying she had more she wanted to ask me over dessert.

So. Should Mister Mike be here to stay?

God bless you, dear reader.
    Love,
      Rose Dickenson