Are Kids Evil?

 

If you are a believer (as I firmly am) that kids do not become fully human until they have reached the age of, say, 25 – then, you will, perhaps, recognize an ethical problem.  If these creatures are not human in the full sense of that word, is it even fair to ask if they are capable of being ‘evil’ which, after all, necessitates a human sense of recognizing that concepts like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actually exist?

We don’t say that ‘brute’ beasts are evil, we just question their instincts.  Sharks (even allowing for Benchley) are not evil creatures; they are not good either – they just are.

So, there is surely a case for saying that apprentice humans just ‘are’ as well.

And yet, and yet.

Let us consider a test situation.  In this part of the world there is a game that kids play.  It is called ‘Marco Polo’ and is simplicity itself to play.  The rules are that when one person says “Marco!” everyone else replies “Polo”.  And that is it.  That is the game.  And kids play it with manic gusto.  And go on playing it.  And on, and on.

There is a sort of genius about it.  How, you might say, innocuous a game.  Where is the harm in it?  Well, let me tell you, if you have listened to kids raucously ‘playing’ this game around a swimming pool for what seems like hours you, as an adult begin to pray for death: either the kids or yourself, after a while it doesn’t really matter.  All you want is for it to stop. 

  

And this is where the genius part comes in.  How can you, seriously, tell kids to stop?  Who is it harming?  And, of course, you know that if a kid suspects for a moment that something they are doing is irritating then there is no inducement on earth that will make them stop.  And what sort of idiot would you be to angrily tell kids to stop saying the name of the great explorer?  Perfect.  The kids have created something that cannot be stopped without making the person stopping it appear like a crazed idiot.  And, once you have suffered from an extended “Marco Polo” just a single mention of “Marco” brings back all the dread that you have previously suffered – instantly.

Do they do it to annoy because they know it teases?  I’m not sure.  Kids love doing it.  It gives an immediate sense of community; it gives form to play; it allows the youngest to get an automatic reaction from elder; it establishes territory by claiming sonic space; it gives voice to youth; it is comforting – and I bloody hate it.  Hate it.

I am not sure if it is hell or purgatory where you would find yourself around a pool with kids playing “Marco Polo” for ever, but the adjective hellish seems to be not inappropriate.

The question of blame obviously centres on whether or not the kids know what they are doing.  If they do not, then they only have to wait until they are 25 when they will realize just how awful they have been for the past two and a half decades.  If they do know what they are doing, then it answers the question at the top.

And, don’t forget Damien!

On a completely unrelated topic – though, come to think about it, there could be a tenuous link using the concept of ‘youth’ – the words of a Christmas carol came back to me as I trudged off the beach through the soft sand.

Never let it be said that my time as a (moderately) angelic looking choir boy in Cathays in Cardiff was wasted.  I had a good boy soprano voice and found the high notes relatively effortless to reach.   

Being in a choir means that you tend to pick up new tunes relatively quickly, in much the same way as a (struggling) trombone player in school orchestras encourages to you get to know orchestral pieces after a couple of rehearsals – well, as trombone player you usually have so few notes to play that you may as well spend the time waiting for your entry by listening to the music that other players are creating.

Although I cannot say that I positively enjoyed my time in the choir (perhaps it was something to do with the stiff, white, plastic collars we had to wear with cassock and surplice) I did get to know a great deal of ‘sacred’ music, and the lyrics. 

There were some that we didn’t really have to learn, and those were carols.  Or should I say, we did get to learn something, because we had to know more than merely the first verses.  Just like being in the Cubs, where the one thing that I retain from my time there is knowing the second verse of the English national anthem, I also know more of the words of more hymns that I ever get the chance to sing.

Anyway, back to the trudging.  Given my thrombosis, embolism etc etc I feel I have a real and authentic reason not to like walking, and have a fully justified condition to find the easiest way to do things that demand physical effort.

So, trudge, trudge, trudge (resenting every step) when the words of one particular carol came back to me about a youngster whingeing about having to make his way through thick snow, following behind his master, who responds by saying:

“Mark my footsteps, my good page

Tread thou in them boldly . .

In his master’s steps he trod

Where the snow lay dinted

Heat was in the very sod

Which the saint had printed”

Works with sand too.  Where Toni left a footprint, I trod and, lo and behold, it was a good sight easier than making my own flat-footed way.

Therefore, Good King Wenceslas, not only gave me an easier way of walking through soft sand, but it also allowed angelic looking little boys to sing the word “sod” inside a church!

Of such things are memories made.

The Use of the Ordinary

Although I swim every day, I have never pretended that swimming is anything other than boring.  It is now like brushing my teeth, it is something that is necessary and you do regularly, but is not exactly pleasurable.  If I don’t have a swim, in the same way when I (rarely) forget to brush my teeth before I go to bed, I feel that there is something missing, something is not right.

I set myself a metric mile each day and up and down I go for sixty lengths in my local pool and at the end of it I feel that I have accomplished something and like ‘Doing a good turn to somebody every day’ my duty is done.

So swimming in our community pool attached to our house raises another problem motivation.  As our community pool is quite small, the last few meters separated form the main pool by an underwater wall to create a ‘kiddies’ splash around area, the actual straight swimming length is limited.  If the pool is empty I compensate by swimming in circles, but it is not entirely satisfactory.

I have, therefore, devised an approach that combines exercise with the law of the Wolf Cub Pack and make a virtue of necessity and swim around picking up and discarding the rogue pine needles that settle on the surface of the water.

I have discovered that reflection or refraction or possibly both, mean that it is easier to see the floating needles from under the water with a pair of goggles than searching the surface from above.  I therefore must look like a swimmer motivated by Brownian Motion as I jitter my way through the water seeking the double refraction of the needles before they are swept out of the pool and to the side - where I am sure that a gentle breeze will waft them back into the water.  But that is not the point: I swim and feel that I am exercising while performing community service.

From time to time I come across insects that are vainly wing-swimming their way through the water to a chlorinated death.  When I do spy the odd wasp or beetle or fly in their death throws, with a positively Franciscan magnanimity, I scoop them out and deposit them on the pool side and drift away on my hoovering duties feeling quasi angelic and somehow ‘justified’!

Today, I have to admit, I haven’t been to the pool for a swim (for lunch, yes, but not for a swim) instead we went to the beach.  We live one street away from the sea, and yet we rarely go to the beach.  I see it every day because I usually cycle down the paseo and drive past it, but we have suddenly become aware that it is already August and we haven’t really ‘done’ the beach.  So two hours was spent beside the waves.

And waves there certainly were.  People usually assume that the Med is a quiet and domestic body of water - and to be fair, it usually is.  Sometimes, however it can be a little spirited.  Today, for example, a yellow flag was flying which indicates that swimming is not recommended.  That could be for a number of reasons, ranging from the quality of the water, through an infestation of stinging jellyfish to adverse water conditions.

Today the water was rough.  Even the profile of the beach has altered, which certainly indicates the waves and currents have been in a terraforming and sand-sculpting mode.

Castelldefels is a generally safe swimming spot because although currents can be strong, they usually drag you back to shore and along the beach.  And that was true today, with the added excitement of tumbling waves strong enough to knock you over.  Which they did.  And strong enough to remove Toni’s bathing costume - though that was in the shallows and he was able to restore decency in the masking obscurity of sand heavy water!

Most of my time was taken up, not with swimming in the sea, but reading on the beach.  I grabbed, at random, an unread Iain Banks novel called The Crow Road, which has (I am not surprised to find out) a place in the Daily Telegraph’s 30 best opening lines in literature (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/30-great-opening-lines-in-literature/the-crow-road/ ) I cannot say, by the way, that I agree with all the choices made there, but I made the mistake of looking through all thirty and for many I was half inclined to find the book in my library and start reading it again - which is always the danger when you have a snippet of something great to tempt you!

Anyway, I have had this novel for some time and only read the first few pages (as who cannot given the opening line!) and for some reason had laid it aside.  This is not something that I usually do, except for Virgina Woolf’s To The Lighthouse that I did (and did with gusto) on many occasions before I finally bit the bullet and read the whole of the damn thing.  I have decided to keep the novel that I am now gripped by purely as beach reading as that gives me an incentive to engage in the futile and empty pastime of lazing in the sun and gives it a sort of purpose.

Tomorrow the first of our final tranches of summer visitors arrive and I am minded to write a series of poems suggested by visitors, their arrival, response etc.  I have made some preparatory notes and look forward to seek where such an enterprise takes me.  The time period is from tomorrow to the end of the month and into September and the three ‘groupings’ of visitors are very different.  I hope that this blog can also be part of the process either for ideas or responses. 

I can but try!

Though I also fear that such a task is merely displacement activity for the work on my Spanish grammar and vocabulary.  Are both possible?  Should be.

Now, having written it down, it seems like a sort of contract with the future!

A contract easily broken!