I once read a good book called The World According to Garp by John Irving. At one point the story is told of the hero’s young son who every summer goes with his mother and father to the seaside. Near the holiday house there is a beach ravaged by a terrible tidal undertow and when the child is big enough to go near the water his father warns him of the dangers of this undertow. Every summer the father gives the warning about the terrible undertow, the wicked undertow, the dangerous undertow. A summer comes when one day the father finds his little son on the beach watching the sea, not daring to go beyond ankle-depth, just watching the sea. His father asks him what he is doing.
“I’m trying to see the Under Toad”, the little boy says.
“The what?” his father asks.
“The Under Toad. I’m trying to see it. How big is it?”
All those years of his father’s warnings the little boy
