Apr 16, 2009 0
Sir Ken Robinson, Cheap Hamburgers and Ditching Duff
I am posting this link as a way to share something that would take too long to articulate if I was to start forming the thought myself.
I will say this, however. I feel we all need to start dancing or singing or writing or drawing or doing whatever it is we do to express ourselves truthfully… WAAAY more often. Ignore the people who choose to judge you because you act or speak of what you believe in. The world is not black and white as they want you to believe. Some form of institution led them to that conclusion and now they want everyone else to conform too, so they do not feel so lonely and empty. The world is a spectrum of colour and the palette is infinite. Common sense will confirm that for you. Gut check it.
Okay, I will post the link at the end… I’m now inspired to write something.
So today, I kept the kids home from school for a ‘Daddy day’. I was too lazy to make lunches and I was watching the latest on the rising Red River and my son came to my bed and asked if he could stay home and my daughter said, “me too” with a toothbrush in her mouth and I thought, why not, let’s have a daddy day! My wife needed to study, she was studying already and so I said, yes, let’s stay home, but we have to get out of the house at some point so mom can have some quiet. We did not get started until around 11 am and we went for early lunch on ‘The Bridge with the Million Dollar Washroom’, as it’s affectionately known as in ‘Peg City. Wednesday’s are cheap Nip and Winni days at the only Sal’s in the city with a great view of the icebergs. After watching floating ice with the kids for an hour, and all of us complaining about tummy aches, I got an idea. Well, actually two ideas. Well, actually, I got one idea, which was, what would it be like to get on one of those big flat ice rafts and take a free ride up north?, and then I asked my daughter to write a story about it and she said no, I’m not going to do that, daddy, you write it, it’s your idea and then I got the real idea to drive to Morris, Manitoba to see the flood of ‘09 and it’s consequences before and then after Winnipeg. A Daddy Day introduction to Duff’s Ditch. Living in the moment kind of stuff. It drove my father crazy, even though he taught it to me. He would lose his temper and yell that I needed to get in touch with reality, mister! Manitoba fathers, they hate that ‘wind will take me where I go in my sailboat’ metaphor.
That reminds me, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is coming to a theatre near you!
See you there, squire!
-Sir Stephen James Burke
So, after looking at all the houses, on ‘their own private islands’ said my son to his mom, my studious wife, later when we got home, along the highway to and from Morris, I followed the Red River Floodway, more or less, using the Winnipeg Perimeter, to Lockport, to see the point where the muddy water is dumped back into the real river. I wanted to teach the kids about this man-made miracle that keeps us (Winnipeggers) relatively dry during these more and more frequent catastrophes. My son slept through the whole lecture (he’s 6) and my daughter (10 going on 11) listened until she couldn’t stand anymore. She was in her own little world and cut me off at one point and asked me, “why is nature so beautiful, daddy?” I noticed she was staring at something she could see inside a puddle full of flood water that was in the exact opposite direction of what I was trying to educate her about. I was taken aback, in a good way, honest, and almost answered her profound and simple question myself before I remembered that her answer was WAAAY more important! (A great professor taught me this a while back as I watched him parenting his own child…) I asked her why she thought it was so beautiful and with almost no hesitation, she said, “probably because it is so ‘random’.” (the most used word of 2008) I thought for a moment about how proud I was of her and added, “Yes! Yea! Yeaahh!! I like that! And all that randomness creates something beautiful and worthy to behold for hours. And then it changes…”
I realize right here and right now as I’m typing this that all the man-made stuff (houses, cars, Manitoba Legislative buildings {I just finished reading the Free Press article on it}, floodways) are all so boring in comparison to what is in the murky water of a puddle! Man-made things are necessary, yes, miraculous even, but sooo boring in comparison.
From this remarkable question of hers, I realized my daughter was listening and forming her own ideas based on what I was trying to explain about an ever-expanding ditch.
My son woke up shortly after this revelation and asked to get out of the car and play. We did. We watched the pelicans glide across the rapid moving water and threw some stones in to tease them a bit, which worked well, we got some real close encounters! and then we left for home, stopping for some dinner on Main street. Wednesday’s are cheap Whopper days at the only BK in the city with an indoor playground.
Here’s my thought. Perhaps it’s Sir Ken Robinson’s (see title and link) as well. Unless we want to live in a boring world, perhaps the judging needs to stop. The funneling. We all need to create and to encourage our kids to continue creating! Because that’s just what they do on a regular basis.
The link:
Time to use my body to bring my head to a pillow.
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