Friday, August 25, 2006
WHY WORKING WITH KIDS ALLOWS YOU TO BECOME THE TERMINATOR WHENEVER YOU DAMN WELL CHOOSE
One of the marvellous assets about working with people under the age of, oh, eighteen is that you can see them in the hallway, and smile at them, and wave at them, and make your finger into a little gun, pointing at their heads while stating flatly in your best Schwarzenegger: "I have come from the future to terminate your existence."
You can then mime shooting them in the face, and they will most likely fall half-way over the stairway railing, managing, in the process, to unleash their own imaginary uzi whose rapid fire bullets strike you in the chest. At which point you can fall to the floor, and they will laugh, and ask if you are alright, and you can stand up, nod, smile and be on your own way to the next class.
And they will think nothing of it. Such goofiness is second nature. Their reaction to your idiotic lunacy will be the same: idiotic lunacy. Kids are hard-wired into avenues of creativity and play that seem like foreign countries I used to visit. They remind me of how I used to think; how I can still think, if I choose. The colours of life can become more vivid, and the gaps between hours richer, fuller, less stolid and adult.
The problem with adults is that we pass each other in the hall, and nod, and smile, and ask how's it going, and pretend to hear the response. We interact without imagination or flair or colour. And our everyday attempts at levity often feel like those old black-and-white movies from the forties that Ted Turner colorized in the eighties-- creepily static and oddly tainted.
Much better to greet somebody you know by pretending to be The Terminator sent from the future to eradicate their existence, only to discover that they, in fact, have turned the tables on you for once and for all, and that you have to fight to maintain your grasp on the here and the now by eluding their invisible arsenal of destruction.
Makes the day go by quicker, is what I'm saying.
You can then mime shooting them in the face, and they will most likely fall half-way over the stairway railing, managing, in the process, to unleash their own imaginary uzi whose rapid fire bullets strike you in the chest. At which point you can fall to the floor, and they will laugh, and ask if you are alright, and you can stand up, nod, smile and be on your own way to the next class.
And they will think nothing of it. Such goofiness is second nature. Their reaction to your idiotic lunacy will be the same: idiotic lunacy. Kids are hard-wired into avenues of creativity and play that seem like foreign countries I used to visit. They remind me of how I used to think; how I can still think, if I choose. The colours of life can become more vivid, and the gaps between hours richer, fuller, less stolid and adult.
The problem with adults is that we pass each other in the hall, and nod, and smile, and ask how's it going, and pretend to hear the response. We interact without imagination or flair or colour. And our everyday attempts at levity often feel like those old black-and-white movies from the forties that Ted Turner colorized in the eighties-- creepily static and oddly tainted.
Much better to greet somebody you know by pretending to be The Terminator sent from the future to eradicate their existence, only to discover that they, in fact, have turned the tables on you for once and for all, and that you have to fight to maintain your grasp on the here and the now by eluding their invisible arsenal of destruction.
Makes the day go by quicker, is what I'm saying.
LIFE AND DEATH: THE NEW UNDERARM DEODERANT
The ruler I found lying around the large white plastic desk at work has Joy emblazoned across the side. The whiteboard marker I use to erase my messy scrawl is Valiant, or so it says. Inanimate objects have been christened harbingers of the finest human emotions, apparently.
I mean, c'mon. Who's kidding who here, right?
We're talking rulers. We're talking whiteboard erasers. If these puny, functional objects wield the greatest sensations known to man, then what hope is there for us, the rest of us, the human ones I mean?
It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld appearance on the Regis Philibin show a few years back. He was riffing as only Seinfeld can, talking about how he was eating LIFE cereal a few days back, wondering who the genius advertising execs were who named this particular product.
"I don't know," Seinfeld said. "If it were me, I would have called them 'Wheateos', or 'Toast-eos'. But somebody sat in a meeting and actually said: "No, this is bigger than that. This is life."
(It's, um, probably funnier when he does it. I swear.)
What's next, is what I'm asking. Pencils marked Ecstasy? Staples labeled Orgasmic? I can see it coming. (No, uh, pun intended.)
Everything has to be happy and bright and shiny and heroic. Things can't be just what they are, otherwise life would be revealed to be, well, mundane. Even difficult.
If we feel the need, as a species, to label office stationery with such superlative endorsements, life itself seems to become cheap and trival and somehow tainted.
In my opinion, anyway. It's all irrelevant anyway, I guess. Excuse me, but I've got to go eat a chocolate bar, Mars, named after a massive planet, a wonder of the universe. And read a magazine, Time, named after the unstoppable hunter that hunts us all. While slapping on a cologne, Eternity, a notion encompassing all the past and the future, but designed essentially for the purpose of making me stink less.
I mean, c'mon. Who's kidding who here, right?
We're talking rulers. We're talking whiteboard erasers. If these puny, functional objects wield the greatest sensations known to man, then what hope is there for us, the rest of us, the human ones I mean?
It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld appearance on the Regis Philibin show a few years back. He was riffing as only Seinfeld can, talking about how he was eating LIFE cereal a few days back, wondering who the genius advertising execs were who named this particular product.
"I don't know," Seinfeld said. "If it were me, I would have called them 'Wheateos', or 'Toast-eos'. But somebody sat in a meeting and actually said: "No, this is bigger than that. This is life."
(It's, um, probably funnier when he does it. I swear.)
What's next, is what I'm asking. Pencils marked Ecstasy? Staples labeled Orgasmic? I can see it coming. (No, uh, pun intended.)
Everything has to be happy and bright and shiny and heroic. Things can't be just what they are, otherwise life would be revealed to be, well, mundane. Even difficult.
If we feel the need, as a species, to label office stationery with such superlative endorsements, life itself seems to become cheap and trival and somehow tainted.
In my opinion, anyway. It's all irrelevant anyway, I guess. Excuse me, but I've got to go eat a chocolate bar, Mars, named after a massive planet, a wonder of the universe. And read a magazine, Time, named after the unstoppable hunter that hunts us all. While slapping on a cologne, Eternity, a notion encompassing all the past and the future, but designed essentially for the purpose of making me stink less.
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