He was 7 years old when his parents took him to a cafeteria. And he could not believe what his eyes told him he saw. It was so big and there were so many choices.

They told him he could pick what he wanted, and that was more freedom than he had ever imagined existed. It was more power and choice than he had ever had to exercise before. All those options waiting, to be selected, and he had the power to choose.

Yet freedom is never completely free. There are always limits to freedom, and even if they had told him he could get what he wanted, he knew there had to be limits to even that much freedom. There was always Daddy watching to make sure his 7-year-old son did not try to use more freedom than he could eat. Daddy had given this freedom and Dad could take it back at any moment. Such freedom must not be abused.

Full of excitement and joy, the young boy picked up his tray and bounded forward. He reaches out and picks up the Jell-o salad and puts it on the tray. Then there is a quick look at father to see if that choice violates some rules of this new game which he has not been told. His father makes no opposition and so the boy goes on.

More agony of decisions, and then comes more thrill of the choice. He makes the next selection and puts it on his plate. There is that quick glance at his father to make sure all is still kosher. Oh, the joy of it all.

Then he comes to the supreme moment in this entire game, the dessert section. The line backs up behind him as he tries to decide. His choice boils down to the lemon pie or the strawberry shortcake with all that whipped cream three inches high. He makes his choice and there is that last desperate glance at his father. Has he stepped over the limit with this last wild wonderful choice? He has not. His joy is complete.

And in his fullness of joy, he slides his tray forward on the track and then out onto nothing but the joy itself, out where there are no tracks and there is no support and the tray crashes to the floor with the horrible rattle of china breaking -- that sound that is so well known in every college dining hall and dreaded by every waiter in the world.

There on the floor were all his dreams. There on the floor were the results of all his wonderful decisions and all his hard-fought choices -- all his wants and desires smashed into one huge mess. And he looks immediately at his father and he does not know whether he would be smarter to cry out of his sorrow at his loss or out of fear for his safety from his father's anger.

There in his father's face the young boy saw that cold combination of anger, frustration, and exasperation. It is the kind of look every child can read and one, I think, they dread worse than punishment itself. Time froze. It was but an instant but it seemed like that moment lasted forever. It has lasted the lifetime of that young boy as he can still feel the terror in his soul. Even at over forty the young boy -- now a man -- can feel that same fear.

Before the father could put his own tray down to accomplish whatever it was that the father intended to accomplish in terms of behavioral modification, the manager of the cafeteria was right there next to the young boy. The manager in a very calm and pleasant manner assured the young man that accidents do happen, that for every problem there were solutions, and as he talked to the boy, the manager, by careful examination of the remains on the floor, figured out what the young boy had had on his tray. The manager sent one of his staff to bring the boy a new tray with everything just like the one that could not fly. The waitress came back with an identical tray to the one that ended up on the floor.