The Gift of a Wise Man

myrrh (mûr) n. An aromatic gum resin obtained from woody plants of the genus Commiphora, valued in the ancient world as a perfume and as an embalming agent. Traditionally, a gift of the Magi to the infant Jesus.

Not so long ago, I inadvertently found myself a party to a conversation at my health club. A woman was complaining about a video she had recently rented for her daughter. The movie, Disney’s Old Yeller (1957), had been recommended to her as a classic, something that every child should one day see. Her daughter had been very upset by the story, and the mother was indignant.

In the movie, a stray yellow dog is first rejected but then adopted by a farm boy on the frontier. The two grow to love one another and become inseparable. Then one day the boy’s family is attacked by a rabid wolf. The dog successfully defends them but is badly bitten. The boy’s mother warns her son that the dog is doomed and must be put down, but the boy cannot accept this verdict. He quarantines Old Yeller until the virus wins and the maddened dog turns on him. Then he recognizes his mother’s wisdom, and he reluctantly carries out the now clearly merciful sentence.

The angry woman summed up this plot scornfully: “A boy loves his dog and then he has to kill him! What kind of lesson is that for a child to learn?” At the time, I had no ready answer, although I felt a passionate desire to defend the movie. I had seen Old Yeller when I was perhaps eight years old, and, had anyone asked, I would have said that it was one of my favorite movies. Yet I was just as upset then as her daughter was now. Although it has been some forty years since the one and only time I had seen the movie, I can still vividly see the climactic scene and feel the bitter anguish I felt then. But I loved the story and have always valued my experience of viewing it. What profound lesson had it taught me, that I should even now feel so strongly about it?

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