Beyond Comprehension

[This is a backdated post]

I want to start this post with a general spiel about what people consider normal, or refer to an article I've read recently, or any of the usual intros that these things often kick off with but this time I honestly can't.

What I'm starting with is this: my 21 year old cousin does not know how to cut her own fingernails.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I've always known she was sheltered, a bit lazy, and that her parents do more for her than they should* but this was the first time that I truly grasped the magnitude of the issue.

We were at a family gathering and halfway through she realised that she had netball afterwards and had to trim her fingernails first or she wouldn't be allowed on the court.

She didn't have anything useful with her so she started biting them off.

Seeing what she was up to, I pulled out a basic set of nail clippers that I keep in my handbag and passed them over.

These sort of dealies, you know the ones.

She thanked me, put them over the end of her nail without opening them and then proceeded to swivel them about, trying to get them to work like a man unsure of how to apply a can opener to a can in a way that will produce food.

Starting to get a bit worried now, I said 'oh here let me get that' and popped them open for her and demonstrated the clipping motion.

She thanked me again, applied the clippers to her fingernail, clamped down and then instead of clipping through, ripped the end of her nail off, then calmly applied it to her next fingernail to do the same.

At this point I think my brain started screaming, and a nail later I managed to get my body to move, plucked them out of her grip and said 'let me tidy those up for you'** and cut her nails for her because Jesus Electric Sliding Christ!

How do you get to 21 without learning how to cut your own nails?

This means that someone else has been doing it for 21 years!

Outside of the times she's presumably gnawed them off.

And if she hasn't learned how to trim her own nails what else hasn't she learned?

There have been a lot of articles written about helicopter parenting*** in the last decade particularly.

Articles about how helicopter parenting is leaving adults stuck in adolescence because overly helpful parents have sought to protect them from disappointment too effectively or have not been able to step back and allow them to learn from their own mistakes.

Articles about how parents are pushing their children into learning environments or professions that make them miserable in the belief that they're setting them up for success later in life which will counterbalance today's misery with future happiness and security.

One of the most extreme manifestations of this inability to deal with 'the real world' or life in general comes in the form of Japan's Hikikomori, individuals so overcome by the pressure to succeed or the fear of social missteps that they lock themselves in their rooms, barely emerging for years.

This of course the extreme but it all has to start somewhere.

Wanting your child to be successful, to achieve their potential, is an admirable goal but it has to be seen within the context of a full life.

Kids also have to be taught how to manage their time, to cook, to take care of themselves, and to balance priorities.

This means introducing chores, encouraging them to manage their own responsibilities during childhood and letting them experience the consequences of failing.

I know my parents bailed me out more than a few times when I panicked about having left an assignment until the last minute or accidentally left it at home and begged for someone to run it to me at school during lunch time so I wouldn't get in trouble.

They also let me fall on my face sometimes so that I realised that I'm the person who needed to remember to do my homework because no-one else was going to do it for me.

My Dad wouldn't give me the answers, he would ask me questions until I started forming my own.

It was a balance that did see me wide-eyed and more than a little nervous at the idea of failing academically but in a position where I could - after having a bit of a panic - manage to talk myself down and through what I needed to get done.

I'm still a bit prone to doing things at the last minute because I know I'm smart enough to get away with it in certain situations but I've also come up against enough situations where being smart doesn't cut it because the task required time and effort to be put into it that couldn't be papered over with a good vocabulary.

But I learned this through trial and error, sometimes having to run smack bang into consequences multiple times before the lesson stuck.

Without encountering natural low-risk failures during their younger years, kids can't possibly get a realistic view of what failure means and how to cope with it or overcome it as they get older.

Every prospective failure will be seen as terrifying.

And you will end up with someone who can't cook, doesn't clean up after themselves, drops out of multiple university courses and can't cut their own fingernails.

Because good lord, there is an age at which children should be put in charge of their own personal grooming and it is a lot younger than twenty-friggin'-one!



*She's been diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder in the last 4 years so now the waiting on her is more of a 'keep an eye on her so she doesn't hurt herself' thing rather than anything else but I can't help but think that if they had given her more rules to follow and boundaries to respect that 'none', she would have been in a better place to deal with her mental illness.

**I know I should have shown her how to use them properly and returned them to her but by this stage I just couldn't bear the idea of her doing something else outlandish. I did point out that if you squeeze them firmly they cut right through and I had shown her how to open them and close them but I'm guessing the lesson won't have stuck.

***See, this is where I would have started this post if I could have stopped my brain wailing 'Her nails! Can't even cut her own nails!'

You Ain't From Around Here, Are Ya?

When I was younger my family lived in Canberra for a good few years and then Coffs Harbour for for a few years after that.

For non-Australians that means we lived in the Australian Capital Territory* (which is inside New South Wales**) and then coastal New South Wales for the first 11 years of my life.
Formative years.

Most of our other relatives lived down in Melbourne. In Victoria.

We only saw the aunties, uncles and cousins a few times a year but every time we did we ended up with a small child regional dialect stand off that was ridiculous in how seriously we took it.

The thing is, after living in Victoria for 19 years since then, I honestly can't remember which state uses which of the following terms.
I just know that I was using the right ones and my cousins (and then high school classmates) were using the wrong ones.
Because they're dumb and stupid***.

Anyway, for your edification, here are some state-specific names for very important thingies.

Prep vs Kinder

 

In Australia you have a year before school where you go to a sort of childcare to get used to the idea of school, your first year of school, then grades 1 through 6 and those are your primary school years. After that you go to high school for years 7 through 12 and voila! You're finished with basic schooling!
The important thing is what people call those initial two years because they use the same names but switched around.
In one state you attend pre-school (preps) and then your first year in primary school you are in kindergarten (kinder).
In the other state you attend kinder and then your first year in primary school you are in preps.

Now, it should be obvious here who is right and who is wrong.

YOU CAN'T ATTEND PRE-SCHOOL FROM INSIDE THE SCHOOL, GUYS!
PRE-SCHOOL OCCURS BEFORE SCHOOL!
IT CANNOT TAKE PLACE WHEN YOU ARE A STUDENT OF THE SCHOOL!

Hair Ties vs Pretties

 

In one state you secure your hair with hair ties, in another state you secure your hair with pretties.
Well lah-di-dah pretties! Your hairdo is sooooooo fancy now that it's being safe guarded by a pretty!
It's a hair tie, guys. It ties your hair.

Bubblers vs Drinking Taps

 

 

I honestly can't remember which one I used to say at school but I assume it was drinking taps because bubblers sounds so stupidly cheerful and effervescent like they're trying to make drinking water this wonderfully uplifting experience.

Potato Cakes vs Potato Scallops

 

This one is nice and simple.
These right here are potato cakes.

These are scallops.

And these are scalloped potatoes.

Nice and straightforward.

Bathers vs Swimmers vs Togs

 

We say bathers.
I am not opposed to the term togs, it is a fun word, it's fine.
I refuse to say swimmers. Swimmers are sperm. Bleh.


For all I know I'm using a mix of terms from one state and terms from another based on how much sense I think they make, rather than staying true to the terms of one state.
Because I'm adaptable and flexible like that.
Except when I'm not because other people are wrong and stupid.



*Usually referred to as the ACT
**Usually referred to as NSW
***I mean, they also put tomato sauce on their fish and chips instead of vinegar so bleh bleh!

The Imagination Imbalance

I've never been afraid of thunderstorms.

As children my siblings and I would sit at the window and watch violent electrical storms tear the sky apart with blinding spidery fingers of light and covered our ears to dampen the inevitable deafening thunderclaps that would follow.
When we could hear again we'd give measured and considered scores out of 10 for each display before shrieking with delight at the next one.

I would imagine what our neighbourhood would look like if enough rain fell to turn the streets into canals and allow us to travel about in dinghies, kayaks and speed boats instead of cars and of course we would act this scenario out for whole days at a time.

One day we were running around playing 'what we would do if everything was flooded' and some well-meaning adult decided to give us a firm but kind talk on the realities of flooding - the property destroyed, lives lost, lives ruined - and ask us if maybe we weren't being a bit insensitive?

We stared at them, stared at each other and ran off to keep playing but the fun had been taken out of the game for that day.

The thing is, now that I'm older I know that having water up to your ceiling would not be great for the neighbourhood but we weren't earnestly suggesting it should happen, random Reality McBuzzkillington!

Why not point out to me that the carpet is not really lava and that if a volcano really did erupt, those of us not killed by the superheated cloud of poisonous gases would probably be asphyxiated by the falling ash?

Why not run up to the kids playing sword fights and explain to them that being stabbed with a sword would really not be all that great? Or that the person you say can't stab you any more because their arm has 'fallen off' probably has leprosy and how gross real leprosy would be?

Kids use play to interact with each other, to learn to understand the world and to develop the parts of their brains that will eventually help them to imagine the lives of other people in an empathetic and responsible fashion.

Don't tell them it isn't cool to pretend you've just disemboweled somebody; they're not desensitised to disembowelling, they're just mucking around.

There are some exceptions to this thinking.
For instance, I can see how people in a community who actually have regular access to guns and who treat these weapons with caution and respect would discourage letting kids 'shoot' each other just in case they ever got hold of a real gun and didn't realise that when they shot their friends with that gun they wouldn't be getting up to swap places.

But the kids that pretend that their towns are flooded aren't going to go bust the dam for funsies.

The kids who pretend to chop off people's heads aren't going to start a skull collection.

The kids who pretend to be monsters who are eating you aren't going to become cannibals.

Just let the little nutters play, age brings context but youth is for imagination.

The Wheels Start Turning

It's the little things really.

This video is a memory for a lot of people - either as a part of their own childhood or that of their children - but for me it was the moment when I realised something.

America isn't just a big city.

Yes, I know it sounds stupid now but as a kid watching TV or movies or being read different books you learn to equate America with New York City or various similar scenes.

Until I saw this video on Sesame Street I had no idea that America had farms, forests, suburbs, small towns...

I had just assumed it was high-rise apartment blocks from one end to the other.

No, don't ask me where I thought their food came from. I was 4! I hadn't gotten to consumerism and production cycles yet.

Once I realised that I started finding out all sorts of things.

Egypt isn't just pyramids and camels!

Africa is a continent and not a country!

Likewise Europe and Asia!

And all three are so full of different traditions and languages I'll probably never hear of all of them let alone learn them!

Some things stick in your memory, like the moment it occurs to you that everyone else has a little universe behind their eyes as well, that they aren't just props moving around in yours.

This wasn't my only childhood epiphany but it's one of the ones that has stayed with me.

When I realised the world was out there and that I wanted to see more of it.

You're Going To Die You Know: A Community Service Announcement

Imagine you've spent all day at work.

Your boss has been riding your ass all week.

You missed lunch because you were trying to meet a deadline.

You have 10 minutes to yourself before you get the train home and straight into 'parental responsibility zone'.

Waiting at the pedestrian crossing you light a cigarette and let yourself unwind just a little bit.

And then you feel a small hand tugging at your trousers at knee level.

You look down and smile tiredly at the little girl staring up at you.

"Hello love," you say.

"You're going to die you know," she pipes in a cheerful fashion.

You stare at her blankly.

You didn't need that, you think to yourself, as the child's mother apologises and drags her away. You could have done right without that.

"Sweetie, you do NOT say that to people!" the mother says as she herds the kid down the street.

"But he was SMOKING! And you said that smoking kills you and-"

"You do NOT say that to people! It isn't polite!"

"Neither is DEATH!"

"Where do you GET this stuff?"*

What did I do to deserve that? You wonder as the light turns green and you cross towards the train station.

Nothing fella, nothing at all.

~~~

To the man minding his own business at the pedestrian crossing and all the people like him, on behalf of my four year old self - I apologise.

But honestly my intentions were good.



*And no, I don't know where I got it either.

You Don't Because You Don't

It's turning warm again.
Warm enough to throw off a couple of the blankets.
Warm enough to sleep with the window open and let the breeze rattle the blinds and startle the cats.
This time of year always makes me pause a moment because sleeping with the windows open used to be banned.
Flat out not allowed.

I didn't know why at the time, I just knew that every night before bed my mother would do the rounds and make sure our bedroom windows were securely shut and remind us in no uncertain terms that they were not, NOT, to be opened again until morning.
Insofar as I thought about it... well, I didn't.
The windows were closed at night.
End of discussion.

Fast-forward a few years to when I was slightly older but still young enough to think that scrunchies were awesome.
It is the hottest spring night in years, it is stifling, but outside there is a gentle movement of air that whilst not any cooler eases some of the oppressiveness.
So I ask my mother if it would be OK to leave my window open.
She says that's fine, seems surprised I even asked.
Even more surprised when I suggest that it's forbidden, isn't it?
I jog her memory.

And she tells me that one summer our town was the location of a string of bizarre assaults.
Almost every night a report would come in of children awaking to find a man crouched at the end of their bed sucking on their toes.
He would run away the moment they screamed and despite the high level of public alert it took weeks to catch him.
And when they did it was the guy who ran our local video store.
We'd been in there once or twice a fortnight for years.
He'd handed out sweets at the counter.
We'd stopped visiting that video store after that.
I hadn't asked why.
But I did keep my window closed.

So it's turning warm again and it's time to put away the winter woolies and pull the pedestal fans out of storage.
And over a decade later I still hesitate just for a moment before leaving my bedroom window open for the night.