Remember during “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,”
when all the kids went trick-or-treating and listed all the great treats they
got, then Charlie Brown said, “I got a rock”? We’re supposed to feel bad for
poor old Charlie Brown, but when I think about most of the kids I know, they
would think a rock was pretty cool. Kids love simple things.
Don’t get me wrong, my kids love toys that talk and move and
make noise and light up and require batteries. They would both spend every day
playing on my computer or my Kindle Fire if I would let them. But they can both
spend an entire day playing with nothing but rocks and sticks and random bits
of trash that they’ve found lying around somewhere, too. For example, my
daughter has spent at least two hours over the course of the day today playing
with this box.
She puts things into it; she takes things out of it. She opens
it; she closes it. She peeks inside to be sure that what she put in is still
there. She trots it around to anyone else in the area and shows it to them.
Occasionally she even hands it to them ceremoniously, announcing very solemnly,
“Present for you.” Sometimes she informs her stuffed monkey, “Look, EE, box!”
EE is a frequent resident of the box, too. She will often pack EE inside and
then bring me the box and, with a twinkle in her eye, shout in a voice of mock
horror, “Mama!!! EE gone. GONE!!!” And when I react with similar horror, she
explodes into giggles, opens the box and says, “Mama, EE here! EE okay!”
The generic simplicity of a box gives it so many more possibilities
than a toy that is specifically something.
A cool toy pirate ship with a Jolly Roger flag that goes up and down and
cannons that shoot Nerf balls and a loudspeaker that shouts, “Ahoy, mateys!” is
fun and exciting, but it will never be any more or any less than a pirate ship.
A big box, however, can be a pirate ship OR a rocket to Mars OR a speeding racecar
OR a tent in the middle of a desert OR anything else a child’s imagination can
come up with. Simplicity equals potential.
I think that’s why adult human beings are fascinated with
children: because they have so much potential. The older a child gets, the more
determined his path in life becomes. Every experience he has points him more
specifically in a certain direction. Whenever he learns something new about
himself, he becomes just a tiny bit limited by that knowledge. But a very young
child, in his simplicity of thought and experience and education, is a
beautifully blank slate on which can be written anything. If only we adults
could have such simplicity!
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