Tyler was laid down in the manger as a baby Jesus in 1985. I was organizing the pageant that year. It was the first year we had a live Jesus. Shauna, his mother, volunteered 6-month old Tyler who was plump and placid -- one of those babies that never cried when passed around. Shauna and I agreed that he would be perfect. At first, Travis, Tyler’s father, didn’t think it was right to have his kid playing baby Jesus. “Isn’t that some kind of sin, like a graven image or something?” Without getting into the definition of a graven image, I directed Travis to the minister who assured him that his interpretation of the bible didn’t make putting little Tyler in the manger a sin, but that, in fact, we are all sinners anyway. This seemed to satisfy Travis, who agreed, and was the one to hand his son to Mary-Jo Cadieux, the gum-smacking Mary that year.
Tyler is all grown up now and I heard from Shauna that he spent time in the Kingclear Youth Detention Centre for pulling a knife on his Civics and Careers teacher. I don’t know where he is now.
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