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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline September 17th, 2011 – Zuccotti Park – New York, NY
It was a crisp September afternoon in New York. The air was thick with the scent of patchouli, weed and disillusionment. Tents sprawled across the plaza, banners shouting slogans — “We Are the 99%,” “End Corporate Greed,” “Occupy Wall Street.” Amid the noise and confusion, a small reddish orange Pomeranian named Truffle trotted through the crowd, her nose twitching in distaste.
She had seen this story before. Too many times.
Truffle’s sharp eyes caught sight of a familiar face. Sean, the son of a man she had known well — a man who had worked his way up from nothing. Sean’s father had grown up poor, taking odd jobs to pay for night school, clawing his way into success through grit and sacrifice. When he finally made it, he spent a fortune sending his son to an elite college — a dream he himself could never afford as a boy.
Now that same son stood in the middle of this hipster doofus protest, surrounded by self styled I-Pad carrying, bourgeois Bolsheviks and their muddle-headed professors preaching Marxist fantasies. It was enough to make her little canine blood boil.
Truffle growled softly. She had no patience for such foolishness — especially the kind that came from people who had never done anything useful or important. People who only know how to whine, complain and destroy – never build. How many Utopian Communist Revolutionaries had she encountered during her many travels? Too many to count!
Determined to intervene, Truffle darted toward the Liberty Square Library adjacent to the park. She pawed through the pile of books marked “Free for Occupy Wall Street!” until she found one that gleamed like truth itself: “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell.
With a grunt and a great deal of effort, she dragged it across the plaza and dropped it at Sean’s feet.
Sean looked down, startled. “Truffle?” he whispered, recognizing her instantly. He bent to pick up the book, flipping through its pages.
The words hit him like a slap of cold reason:
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.”
He frowned, scratching his head. Around him, the chants and slogans suddenly started to sound silly and hollow.
Over the next few days, Sean read as he sat in the middle of the cosplay revolutionary madness taking place all around him. He read about incentives, markets, and the folly of utopian thinking. He realized that the professors who had filled his head with Marxist theory had never built a business, never created a job, never risked anything. They couldn’t even organize a free faculty lounge doughnut day, much less all of society. Why on earth was he listening to them?
By the week’s end, Sean quietly packed his things. He walked past the tents and the slogans, back toward his apartment — sadder, wiser, and ready to rebuild his understanding of the world.
Truffle followed him to the edge of the park, tail wagging softly. Her mission was complete.
Months later, Sean wrote an email to a friend:
“I went to Occupy Wall Street looking for justice. I left with a lesson in economics — and a little dog to thank for it.”
Truffle, the tiny, furry philosopher of Zuccotti Park, had done what no protest could: she reminded one young man that freedom and responsibility, not slogans and envy, are the true foundations of prosperity. And sometimes the young have to be saved one person at a time.
And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny paw.
