I have an oddly shaped angel who looks after me. In my daydreams, Augie appears with wings far too small for his stout body. He wears red, full-body underwear and a big white cowboy hat. Augie can’t fly. It is aerodynamically impossible, but he does his best by taking long hops over the sagebrush.
Late yesterday afternoon, after an exhausting day of failing to get my points across to an assortment of friends and employees, I feel a push in my back. It’s Augie, stumbling in from the west.
“Augie,” I say, “Why can’t you enlighten these people who don’t agree with me? I thought it was an angel’s job to make this earth a better place. I can’t do it on my own.”
Augie, half hiding under his big white cowboy hat, responds, “It’s a tough job to open people up to new ways of thinking. From early childhood, you humans accumulate all kinds of beliefs that lock you into one-track thinking.”
“You aren’t trying hard enough, Augie,” I insist. “Why don’t you sneak up and scare the most cynical offender and get them to be more open-minded?”
Augie, my awkward angel, hops away and I return daydreaming about the way things should be.
Suddenly, I’m startled out of my wits.
Augie has returned, slapping one of his tiny wings in my face.
“Boo,” he says to me.