"I hope," said the principal, "that you will remember what you have just said when I propose the remedy. As to the problem itself, I must put it bluntly—your son Edmund refuses to compete."
If any other man had said this to me I would have smashed his face in. Celia looked at me warningly. Again I masked my feelings.
"This is a terrible thing to hear," I said sweetly. "But surely it can't be as stark and simple as that. Freddie must be ill or emotionally disturbed. Have your doctors given him a checkup? Have your psychoanalysts examined him?"
"Long ago and continually, Mr. Sponsor. That was your wife's original suggestion. Your boy was completely uncooperative with the analysts. Resistant. Negatively competitive, if you know what I mean. In fact, I will repeat what one of our doctors said. If your boy could reverse his attitude, and put all the energy he uses to fight the system into battling his future economic opponents, he'd become a Top Competitor. However, a year has gone by, and we have not been able to bring about the slightest change. Now, in fact, the situation has gotten out of hand."
"But," I said, trying to sound detached and clinical, "how does this non-competitiveness, as you say, manifest itself in our son?" The prefix non had a bitter taste in my mouth.
"In every way," said the principal. "He won't play competitive games with the other children. Intellectually, he won't exert himself against his classmates. Financially, he refuses to earn bonus points selling magazine subscriptions in his leisure time. This, as you know, goes against the very principles on which our democracy is based. It's subversive in its influence on the other children. If he were not so young, if he did not come from a well-known competitive family, one would almost be tempted to think Edmund an Australian spy!"
"Come now!" said Celia indignantly. "Expel Freddie from your school if you wish, but don't slander him."
The door buzzed softly, then slid open. Freddie entered, followed closely by Masefield.
Freddie had been crying. His eyes opened wide and an expression of joy hit his face as he saw us.
"Mother!" he exclaimed, rushing to Celia's arms. She hugged him fervently. I patted him manfully on the shoulder, but I felt shy and a little inept. "Dad!" he added, running the back of one hand across his tear-stained cheeks.