is in the air
Sunday, March 18, 2007
I was watching a kid play with one of those plastic shape thingies, where you have to put them into their respective holes, like a blue cylindrical block into a circular hole. The kid was cheerily humming a nameless tune that made me hum silently as well, and not even once did he lose concentration on his play. Good multi-tasking skills for a toddler, a boy no less. Soon he had placed all shapes into their proper places, except for two, the red heart-shaped and the yellow sun-shaped thingimajig. It confused and unnerved me that he stopped working on the shapes, after finishing the others quickly. He was silent, and yes, he stopped humming (which was what really caught my attention), and I noticed that he was mashing the sun-shaped block on to the heart-shaped hole, and when he got tired of it, he would try to mash the other block on the other hole. Not once did he try to put them into the correct place. Though he would always end up failing, and unfinished, he would keep at it and, even without the merry humming, he would smile. Interested, I come close and ask him what he was doing. The kid looked at me in a weird way, but he smiled at me, then he said,
"Nothing really. I'm just trying to (mash mash mash) this into the hole, but it won't fit." And he continued mashing and pushing.
I told him that it wouldn't really fit, since the shape doesn't go with the hole. He answered, without looking at me,
"But, if I put the that block (the suns-shaped one) into the circle (circular hole) it would fit. What makes you say that it can't fit in this (heart-shaped hole)?" And he mashed incessantly.
Thinking about what he said, it made sense - to the logic of a 7-year old maybe. But it didn't to me. So I said goodbye to him (and he gave me the weird look again, and smiled), and left him to mash to his content.
It's so much easier to be a kid.
smiled at the sun again @ 10:10 PM,
