The Littlest Hitler

I really like the development this story goes through.  At first it was slightly whimsical, just about a kid who got himself in a really bad situation.  As the story continued, you got an understanding of his home situation.

His mother left his father, and it doesn't seem like she really cares about her son.  You only hear him talking about his father.  His father seems a little checked out, he has three ovens in their "living room".  The boy says he doesn't like having friends over because of the stoves.  The father doesn't really understand whats appropriate for a kid to be exposed to.  He shows his 9 year old son how to roll a joint.  That's just terrible parenting.

One part that really stood out to me was at the end when the stoves are being compared to one another. One of the stoves is dead, one has embers in it, and the other one has a fire going.  I think this symbolizes the amount of guilt the boy is feeling.  In the beginning he just thinks that he's being a really scary guy for Halloween.  Then, when people start making fun of him, he starts to realize that dressing as Hitler wasn't a good idea.  And then, when he sees the Jewish kids that couldn't go trick-or-treating, he starts to feel really guilty.

One moment of my childhood that kind of reminds me of this story is when I was separated from my family in a mall when I was around two or three.  We were walking through all of the shops that had these huge signs on them, and lots of interesting things in the hallway, and I must have gotten distracted.  I ended up wandering away from the rest of the group after I had seen something I really liked.  I don't remember ever feeling panicked, or even realizing that I had gotten lost.  Eventually my family found me in the Hello Kitty store that had a person dressed in costume.  I had apparently been hugging the dressed up person for at least fifteen minutes.

My parents really love to talk about this story all of the time, and whenever they bring it up I kind of cringe.  I mean, I caused everyone fifteen minutes of complete panic because I got distracted by a giant Hello Kitty.  The worst part of it all is that I never even really liked Hello Kitty, I just really liked giant mascots because they reminded me of Disney World.