Happy new adventures

The Earth has moved around the Sun for another whole year.
May 2014 be full of new adventures for you.

Chatterboxes and Cootie Catchers

A mother showed me her daughter’s folded paper version of an age-old game and asked whether I had seen it before. She had made them herself, while growing up as a girl in Shanghai. A Fortune Teller, Whirlybird, or Cootie Catcher in the United States (for catching cooties) and a Chatterbox in Australia, the game has a long history. I hadn’t seen one for a while, but according to the book, Studying Girl Culture: A Reader’s Guide, girls in Japan were first observed playing this simple playground pastime as early as the 1600s. Social trends come and go, amazingly though, this simple one remains. It moved from the East to the West from generation to generation of young girls and in Melbourne 2013, the game is still alive and well.

Kids + play = happy

This week is Children’s Week in Australia. It’s an annual event established around 17 years ago. I can’t say that I have ever paid much attention to it. Officially designated occasions come and go, often getting lost in a sort of designed by a committee nothingness. In this instance, the idea that the week ‘celebrates the right of children to enjoy childhood’ struck a chord. Isn’t that right a given? The thought that kids would have to fight for the right to a childhood is reason enough for this week to exist. Kids + play = happy = learning = good outcomes for all. It’s not hard to do the maths.

Happy Dad’s Day

Today is Father’s Day in Australia.
So here’s to you all, everywhere.

Magic hands

Recently received a gift in the post from a kind and thoughtful friend. It came packaged via a warehouse from somewhere in the world. The curious item above somehow got caught up amongst the packaging. Definitely the best hands I’ve ever been dealt.

Anthropomorphism #4

There is a little rock climbing wall in a park near home that we like to visit sometimes.
While staring at the wall for too long one day, it transformed before me. If I was going to be all fancy I would say that it reminded me of an Yves Tanguy painting. This a Baker Smith blog post though and we see turtles in clouds and Charlie Brown‘s face in trivets, so what the wall really reminded me of that day was an exploding Mr Potato Head. I photographed some rocks with my phone then assembled them. Doubting Thomas here he is, half-baked – an alternate Mr Potato Head.

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker

I know plenty of 40-year-olds that don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. I know kids that know exactly what they want to be.

I remember a 5-year old school friend that wanted to be a fox. I don’t know if it was for the working hours and benefits, the fur, or if it was simply a lifestyle choice, but it was a cool idea. It sure beat my half-hearted plans to be a motorcycle cop, a decision based entirely on the aesthetics of wearing reflective sunglasses and racing around dirt roads while a funky soundtrack was amplified to all my good citizens. The man was in town.

Some top choices by kids: Astronaut, teacher, ballerina, rock star, ninja and …

What did you want to be when you were very young? Let us know.

Can you hear me?

Easter. For me, a time to be with family and friends. A time to communicate. And a time to switch off devices (the new vices) probably. However, a five-year-old and I recently sang into the voice recognition app of a well known tablet device and this caused much merriment during our leisure time together.

‘Twinkle twinkle little star,
how I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle twinkle little star,
how I wonder what you are.’

When recognised by the tablet app became:

You didn’t twinkle twinkle you.
How I wonder what you’re up to.
Above the world, so high.
Are you gay, Dengate?
Are you Islanders?
Twinkle twinkle? Hello, are you? Hey Mr B!!

Delighted to see that millions of hours of software programming had resulted in an app capable of wetting the pants of a five-year-old, we continued …

This little piggy went to market.
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy had roast beef for dinner,
and this little piggy had none.
This little piggy went ‘wee wee wee wee wee all the way home’.

And this became:

Listening to you Intermarket.
This little piggy stayed home.
Are you STMP?
Has Rosengate had dinner?
The bisterd!
Looking at them, and this, is completely where we we we we knew.
All fall. On the way home!

More merriment.

Someone reminded me recently, ‘you have two ears and one mouth. Use them accordingly’. Perhaps the great tablet displayed a virtue and shortcoming in the same beat. It got us laughing while exposing its listening limitations.

Definitely time to switch off devices and to reboot relationships. Time to understand what the people you care about mean when they speak.

Happy Easter. Enjoy your loved ones.