"So this kid is squeaking — "
"To prove to himself that he exists."
"Yes; but if a boy never stands still — and this one would annoy virtually anyone he encounters with feet like fingernails on a blackboard — he will never think beyond his own little movements in the movements and changes of this world. Furthermore he'll never conceptualize permanence and truth and his ideas will be myopic and short term. Even if there aren't solid Platonic ideas out in Never- Never land and all ideas are just attempts at understanding what passes through the senses, standing back and contemplating life at least allows a person to think about the various perspectives of an issue before making a decision. It improves the ability to make good decisions. My theory is that for every twenty minutes of inordinate movement that a boy or a teenage boy carries out he should be put in shackles and fetters in a closet for the other forty."
He smiled admiringly at her words despite not understanding many of them.
She simplified her flurry of words. "Maybe movement gives a boy self-confidence that he exists but unless he is put in chains and kept in a closet half the day, he will think that there is nothing else beyond movement."
"Is there?" he asked.
"I don't know," she confessed.
"Do you do that to your son — put him in chains?" He chuckled.
"Coming soon," she kidded. "Aren't I right to contain males and movement?" she nudged him with her fist and then tucked his hand into her own.
"As our Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin says it — if I can quote what I memorized in an English translation, 'How smoothly, rapidly, and freely the sleigh glides in the moonlight when you are with a friend and when, warm and fresh beneath her sable fur, flushed and trembling, she squeezes your hand.'"