Love Me Not Unit

In "Popular Mechanics", Ettlinger creates a new version of King Solomon's wise decision. In this story, two women ask their King to decide who is the mother of the child. One woman stole the child and left her dead baby for the other woman. Knowing this was not hers, she went to the King for his judgment. He decided to cut the baby in half, but before this could happen, the rightful mother screamed for them to stop. She would rather have her child live with the other woman than to be killed. This sign of love eluded to the correct mother. Similarly, Ettlinger utilizes this old plot; however, he revamps and tweaks it. The parents of a child are fighting for the custody of their child. Both want it, and so they try to rip him from the other's grasp. The final line, "In this manner, the issue was decided," eludes to the death of the child. Instead of wanting the child to live, they both greedily pulled at him until he died. This implicit ending demonstrates the theme that people do not always do what is the best for everyone in the situation. Rather, humans greedily pull and take until someone is hurt. The man killed his son when he "pulled back very hard", and now, both are without a baby. 

In a similar way, I remember a cartoon from my childhood called Recess. A small boy became King of the Playground for the day and handled a situation between two girls and a doll. (4:30 minutes into the video)