When our cousin MB was but a wee thing...and listen, she was as precocious and intelligent as she could get...at the age of two, she clearly uttered this question: "Grandma? Do they have French fries here?" There was no baby talk or gibberish. It was as plain and intelligible as it could be! Back to the story....Cousin MB was unwrapping her presents at the family's Christmas gathering. She eagerly tore through the lovely wrapping to discover a box. "It's a box!" And she was satisfied with that. For her, there was no need to investigate what was inside the box. For the grown ups in the room, for the cousins just a bit older than she (that does NOT include me or Mr. Snark as we are old enough to be her parents), this was a beautifully hysterical thing. It's one of those moments that has gone down in family lore. It isn't a family gathering if someone doesn't utter, "It's a box!"
When Mr. Snark and I became first time home owners, Y1 was about 18 months old. He was a darling boy...golden curls and chubby cheeks and much like Cousin MB, he loved a box. There was a rather large box that remained part of the living room landscape for many weeks after we moved. It became the favorite plaything...for him AND his daddy. Y1 would climb under the box and knock on the flap that Mr. Snark had cut for a window. Of course, the knock was answered with "Whose there?" The little window flap would be thrust open and giggling all the while, Y1 would answer "No body's home!"
Boxes are a useful things when you have little boys who have massive collections of trains, M*tchbox cars, L*gos and other little things that need to be transported from one place to another. And by that, I don't necessarily mean anything more than from their bedroom to the living room. There were also boxes that held little note pads and pencils. Boxes that had crayons and scissors. Boxes for the farm animals and boxes for the jungle animals and please...do not mix the farm animals with the jungle animals if you want to keep the farm animals alive. There were even boxes that were used to hide the wrappers of purloined snacks (this meant that snacks were put out of the reach of sneaky hands)!
When Y2 went to Mother's Day Out program at one of the local churches in SmallTown, Ga, the children had little cubby holes for their bags and such. Really, boxes without lids. I picked him up on one particular day and was handed a photo that had been taken just a few days earlier. The photo was of Y2 with his head tucked into his cubby hole, taking a nap...standing up. His teacher just had to take that picture and I'm so glad she did. The children were playing in their room and one of the teachers realized Luke wasn't in the mix. When she turned around, she saw him tucked into the cubby hole. It wasn't more than fifteen minutes, but he managed to find a surprising new use for that particular box.
In kindergarten, he was put on the target list for our school's gifted testing during his 1st grade year. We moved before the testing could take place, but his 2nd grade teacher, here in Bamaham, recommended the same thing. She said his ability to think outside of the box was quite uncanny. Look, half the time he doesn't know there is a box. We like to say he's sitting on the box, not really being fully aware that the box even exists. And he's still that way.
It makes life hard, sometimes, because not all of us have that gift of seeing outside of what's obvious. We get so used to boxing things a certain way because that's what's familiar. Sometimes we like to say because that's how we've always done it....it's tradition...it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed/changed. We don't want to offend anyone by trying something different. It's not always the case that the different is better....it's just different. Doing something JUST because it's tradition isn't always a good thing. Sometimes the tradition loses meaning and those going through the motions of observing the tradition are just marking time, with no connection to the tradition and it becomes an exercise in futility.
Life is too short to be confined to the obvious. I'm not saying that we need to throw tradition out the window....not at all. I guess what I mean is that maybe we need to look to the ones who have the gift of seeing beyond the obvious and try to see things from their perspectives. Maybe we need to just climb up on the box and look around.
When Mr. Snark and I became first time home owners, Y1 was about 18 months old. He was a darling boy...golden curls and chubby cheeks and much like Cousin MB, he loved a box. There was a rather large box that remained part of the living room landscape for many weeks after we moved. It became the favorite plaything...for him AND his daddy. Y1 would climb under the box and knock on the flap that Mr. Snark had cut for a window. Of course, the knock was answered with "Whose there?" The little window flap would be thrust open and giggling all the while, Y1 would answer "No body's home!"
Boxes are a useful things when you have little boys who have massive collections of trains, M*tchbox cars, L*gos and other little things that need to be transported from one place to another. And by that, I don't necessarily mean anything more than from their bedroom to the living room. There were also boxes that held little note pads and pencils. Boxes that had crayons and scissors. Boxes for the farm animals and boxes for the jungle animals and please...do not mix the farm animals with the jungle animals if you want to keep the farm animals alive. There were even boxes that were used to hide the wrappers of purloined snacks (this meant that snacks were put out of the reach of sneaky hands)!
When Y2 went to Mother's Day Out program at one of the local churches in SmallTown, Ga, the children had little cubby holes for their bags and such. Really, boxes without lids. I picked him up on one particular day and was handed a photo that had been taken just a few days earlier. The photo was of Y2 with his head tucked into his cubby hole, taking a nap...standing up. His teacher just had to take that picture and I'm so glad she did. The children were playing in their room and one of the teachers realized Luke wasn't in the mix. When she turned around, she saw him tucked into the cubby hole. It wasn't more than fifteen minutes, but he managed to find a surprising new use for that particular box.
In kindergarten, he was put on the target list for our school's gifted testing during his 1st grade year. We moved before the testing could take place, but his 2nd grade teacher, here in Bamaham, recommended the same thing. She said his ability to think outside of the box was quite uncanny. Look, half the time he doesn't know there is a box. We like to say he's sitting on the box, not really being fully aware that the box even exists. And he's still that way.
It makes life hard, sometimes, because not all of us have that gift of seeing outside of what's obvious. We get so used to boxing things a certain way because that's what's familiar. Sometimes we like to say because that's how we've always done it....it's tradition...it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed/changed. We don't want to offend anyone by trying something different. It's not always the case that the different is better....it's just different. Doing something JUST because it's tradition isn't always a good thing. Sometimes the tradition loses meaning and those going through the motions of observing the tradition are just marking time, with no connection to the tradition and it becomes an exercise in futility.
Life is too short to be confined to the obvious. I'm not saying that we need to throw tradition out the window....not at all. I guess what I mean is that maybe we need to look to the ones who have the gift of seeing beyond the obvious and try to see things from their perspectives. Maybe we need to just climb up on the box and look around.
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