My OperaJust kids
Monday, January 10, 2011 9:42:35 AM
Sometimes I have to argue with my neighbour about a strange common way of wiew about children.
I'm sure all of you had heard about people comparing kids with dogs... Because they're instinctive, puppy-like and soOo nice.... But a kid is not a dog: you can't ask a dog to have abstract thoughts, a thing every little child can do.
People always say this because they see kids like a strange half-gods all busy in play and without any care in the world. Maybe they can be more thoughtless than an adult, but they are not free from pain and responsibilities.
The ones who think childhood is a golden age, can't remember the real time of their own life. Or, maybe, their parents did not care about their education, so they grew up as spoiled brats, and only at the age of 18 (or later...) they discovered world is not a free theme-park.
What a trauma! So, they remember childhood as paradise, and the present day as their damnation.
If kids were like dogs, maybe it would be because they can be greedy, pityless, and they can forget anything... but it could be said also for adults. So, not only kids, but all humans can be compared with dogs. In both cases you can't say kids and dogs are the same.
Sometimes I hear about kids as little angels or fairies, as if to be so young gives you the fairy-tale 'white' and pure innocence. Kids are not angels, kids can have the very same features adults can show.
Age is nothing. The only difference is children have less experience then adults, and that's all. Kids can be very weak, in mind and in body because their limited experience, but they have nothing less than adults have. Children can teach adults, when they are taken seriously.
For a child three years are more than a life, meanwhile for a full grown up person, in the main situations, three years are nothing more than three brief seasons seen on a calendar...
The difference between a 8 years old boy and a 12 years old boy is deep: many grades are between them. The same difference of four years can be ignored from people of 20 and 24, because the difference is more shaded.
If you're four, you're still at the kindergarten; when you're 8, instead, you write and read, you are asked to do homework, and you are proud about having stopped crying when your mom has gone away leaving you at school.
You can easily hear about how are precious are eyes and sight of a child: they see things in a simplified way that is very near to wisdom... Well, maybe could be like this, but you have to reflect on sigle cases: not all children are great 'springs' of wisdom. You can't say "all childen" do this and that.
I had a deep thought about this.
Undoubtably children's eye is hard to safe from growing up... But if you hear how precouis is the sight of a kid, at the same time you see an entire world that can't suffer people that see as children.
If you see a guy all dressed in colors, and not all black as all seem to be dressed nowadays, don't tell me you don't see him as a strange phenomenon or a freak. If you see a girl playing happiliy with dolls and with Lego toys, don't tell me you don't think strange things about her.
If you hear someone shouting how beautiful is the moon tonight, don't tell me you don't feel a bit suspicious about him or her.
That's it. If you take a new way or maybe just a different way, if you trust the thing about children's wisdom, you are seen as a crazy strange person... and it's not easy to live this way.
When I was 3 years old I decided to not grow up: I heared, that old time, about how was precious my own way to see the world... I was 3 years old, the 'perfect' age people used to say. So, my goal was to keep it in safe, and to show the world how precious a kid could be: I wanted to be threated as adults said kids had to be threated. I was sure I was the real embodiement of what I heard about being a child.
Obviously I was threated exactly as all other children: no explanations, hits and no rights, all responsibilities, exaggerate sense of guilty about things I could not manage at my age... and so on.
Now, with all my own experience, I see how deeply I misunderstood what I heared.
People said all great things about children, but they did not really trusted what they said. It was another way to say that childhood is a golden age, and to feel with less responsibilities.
If I was so good and perfect whan I was a child, and if adults lost all this perfection, how in the world they can be good in anything?
If I'm not perfect I'm justified, and I have nothing to explain, if I'm stupid and brainless.
It's because of all this I decided my main charachters would be children: my oldest character, Scarpa d'oro (Golden Shoe) is 12 years old, but he's a great thief, very far from being an angel or a generous fairy without faults. And Luca is an 11 years old killer. They're not all good or all bad. They're just children, even if they show the worst sides of being human.
They're smart, they're childish, they're not easy to handle. They're chldren, they're just kids.
Iinvented Scarpa d'oro when I was 9 years old, and Luca when I was 18.
I think my reasoning was good, even if I made it when I was not 10 years old.
Was I worth to be compared to a puppy? I don't think so, but also, we have to see case per case. Maybe come children feel really like dogs... But I think you have not to generalize, to see all children are like puppies or animals. If you say it, I'll argue with you.
I'm sure all of you had heard about people comparing kids with dogs... Because they're instinctive, puppy-like and soOo nice.... But a kid is not a dog: you can't ask a dog to have abstract thoughts, a thing every little child can do.
People always say this because they see kids like a strange half-gods all busy in play and without any care in the world. Maybe they can be more thoughtless than an adult, but they are not free from pain and responsibilities.
The ones who think childhood is a golden age, can't remember the real time of their own life. Or, maybe, their parents did not care about their education, so they grew up as spoiled brats, and only at the age of 18 (or later...) they discovered world is not a free theme-park.
What a trauma! So, they remember childhood as paradise, and the present day as their damnation.
If kids were like dogs, maybe it would be because they can be greedy, pityless, and they can forget anything... but it could be said also for adults. So, not only kids, but all humans can be compared with dogs. In both cases you can't say kids and dogs are the same.
Sometimes I hear about kids as little angels or fairies, as if to be so young gives you the fairy-tale 'white' and pure innocence. Kids are not angels, kids can have the very same features adults can show.
Age is nothing. The only difference is children have less experience then adults, and that's all. Kids can be very weak, in mind and in body because their limited experience, but they have nothing less than adults have. Children can teach adults, when they are taken seriously.
For a child three years are more than a life, meanwhile for a full grown up person, in the main situations, three years are nothing more than three brief seasons seen on a calendar...
The difference between a 8 years old boy and a 12 years old boy is deep: many grades are between them. The same difference of four years can be ignored from people of 20 and 24, because the difference is more shaded.
If you're four, you're still at the kindergarten; when you're 8, instead, you write and read, you are asked to do homework, and you are proud about having stopped crying when your mom has gone away leaving you at school.
You can easily hear about how are precious are eyes and sight of a child: they see things in a simplified way that is very near to wisdom... Well, maybe could be like this, but you have to reflect on sigle cases: not all children are great 'springs' of wisdom. You can't say "all childen" do this and that.
I had a deep thought about this.
Undoubtably children's eye is hard to safe from growing up... But if you hear how precouis is the sight of a kid, at the same time you see an entire world that can't suffer people that see as children.
If you see a guy all dressed in colors, and not all black as all seem to be dressed nowadays, don't tell me you don't see him as a strange phenomenon or a freak. If you see a girl playing happiliy with dolls and with Lego toys, don't tell me you don't think strange things about her.
If you hear someone shouting how beautiful is the moon tonight, don't tell me you don't feel a bit suspicious about him or her.
That's it. If you take a new way or maybe just a different way, if you trust the thing about children's wisdom, you are seen as a crazy strange person... and it's not easy to live this way.
When I was 3 years old I decided to not grow up: I heared, that old time, about how was precious my own way to see the world... I was 3 years old, the 'perfect' age people used to say. So, my goal was to keep it in safe, and to show the world how precious a kid could be: I wanted to be threated as adults said kids had to be threated. I was sure I was the real embodiement of what I heard about being a child.
Obviously I was threated exactly as all other children: no explanations, hits and no rights, all responsibilities, exaggerate sense of guilty about things I could not manage at my age... and so on.
Now, with all my own experience, I see how deeply I misunderstood what I heared.
People said all great things about children, but they did not really trusted what they said. It was another way to say that childhood is a golden age, and to feel with less responsibilities.
If I was so good and perfect whan I was a child, and if adults lost all this perfection, how in the world they can be good in anything?
If I'm not perfect I'm justified, and I have nothing to explain, if I'm stupid and brainless.
It's because of all this I decided my main charachters would be children: my oldest character, Scarpa d'oro (Golden Shoe) is 12 years old, but he's a great thief, very far from being an angel or a generous fairy without faults. And Luca is an 11 years old killer. They're not all good or all bad. They're just children, even if they show the worst sides of being human.
They're smart, they're childish, they're not easy to handle. They're chldren, they're just kids.
Iinvented Scarpa d'oro when I was 9 years old, and Luca when I was 18.
I think my reasoning was good, even if I made it when I was not 10 years old.
Was I worth to be compared to a puppy? I don't think so, but also, we have to see case per case. Maybe come children feel really like dogs... But I think you have not to generalize, to see all children are like puppies or animals. If you say it, I'll argue with you.
scott cummingI_ArtMan # Tuesday, January 11, 2011 1:10:54 AM
i think it's just the opposite. my childhood was a paradise. that makes me more able to stay in paradise.
Marcella EmmaHirpina81 # Tuesday, January 11, 2011 7:18:38 PM
You can't feel justified and with cool mind saying you are a kid.
Then, let me stop to act the teacher, a role I deeply dislike, and let me give you my warmest welcome here.
Non sono sociologi e psicologi quelli da cui ho sentito dire queste cose a proposito del 'fanciullino', ma da varie voci: scuola, televisione, ben pensanti... E devi vedere quanto si sentono furbi e possessori del dogma quando affermanno che bambini e cani hanno la stessa testa!
Per mia fortuna non ho mai avuto a che fare con psiclogi di alcun genere, e quando ora li ascolto, ho già una mia ide salda, per cui vedo le crepe dei loro ragionamenti.
I love my own characters, even if they are metaphores of the worst human features. Being children makes them easy to be saved... if there was a world that wants to save them, or just that notices them. World ignore them, so, they grow up this way. If Scarpa d'Oro is orphan and magic, Luca has got a family... but they're both left to theirself. That's the point: all the world can say how they pretty, blond and nice, but no one wants to hear they are a thief and a killer.
Marcella EmmaHirpina81 # Sunday, June 12, 2011 5:21:14 PM
If you are a kid, adults blandish you, they don't really play with you. I saw it, and I was aware of it, and I was 4 years old... but 'normal' people are not aware of it, and think that age was a real Heaven: all adults were at your feet, they could give you all you want and need.
If you are a kid and you act as the kid you are, adults laugh at you. But you are not a clown; 'normal' people don't remember how many times they felt flustrated, embarassed, uneasy, and nobody told them why.
They laugh at you and about you, not with you. You cry, and they see only a spoiled brat, not a wounded soul.
I felt like this, but I suppose I was too serious, even at that old time.
I clearly remember the way of teaching us little 3 years old kids. And it was far to be pleasant. Then, I grew up, and I thought that the hasrdest period of my life was gone, because when you are 7 years old you change school, and you will be threated differently. And, above all, you are prepared...
People don't remember all this. Maybe they had a better experience, or they have no memories of it.
They become adults, and discover that life is not a party. And so they see that time like a Lost Paradise, and you can't open their eyes in any way. Maybe they don't want a Wise Cricket in their ears, saying that their pink dream is all a fake, that memory has different colors. But it is. They have to know it.