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.

It's only skin deep!

There is a shade of brownness beyond which I do not go.

I do recall a summer trip to Scandinavia where a combination of constant good weather (apart from the damp city of Oslo) and malnutrition (food was far too expensive to buy on a regular basis) meant that I did get browner that I had ever been before.   
There was also the three-week trip to the Isles of Greece (where burning Sappho etc etc – though I didn’t actually go to that particular island) where I backpacked my way from Athens to Crete, staying along the way in some of the most basic, unfinished and insalubrious places that little money could buy.   

My accommodation was so Spartan (so to speak) that it did not afford the luxury of a mirror in what could laughingly be called the bathrooms, and it was only in Crete at the end of my journey that I actually saw my reflection and did not recognize the coloured gentlemen that looked back at me.

But normally, I go brownish and stay at a level of discolouration that, while darker than most of my white skinned compatriots, is nowhere near the golden depth that I seek.

In the past I peeled.  Didn’t we all?  A fortnight’s holiday in the foreign sun and a desperate necessity to get some sort of colour for our money, meant that we stayed too long too soon on the sunny beach and then suffered a shower at the end of the day.  As one of my friends so eloquently put it, “If, at the end of the day, the shower doesn’t hurt – then you haven’t sunbathed properly!”  And you actually looked forward to the first peel, because the skin under your shedding would stay that colour for your return home!

As I now live in where I used to go for holidays, my strategy is a little different.  I ALWAYS use sun tan lotion – and not (definitely not) the stuff that is only one step removed from cooking oil.  The minimum I use is factor 30, though I do deviate to factor 20 sometimes when the flesh is weak.  When I think that I used to use factor 5 or even factor 0, I shudder!

So, I am more sensible, but I do not seem to get returns for my carefulness.  Where is the deep “honey skin” that has ‘ere been my quest?   

Where indeed!

My mother was light skinned, fair haired and blue eyed.  My father was swarthier.  My mother was a sun worshipper, though in Britain she often said that the only place that she ever felt truly warm was in a Turkish Bath!  My father tanned naturally, but moderately.  I am more naturally dark skinned than my mother, but I seem to lack my father’s ease at getting a reasonable colour.

And what, after all, is the worth of all that effort?  Skin cancer is an ever-lurking threat and the advantages of Vitamin D, or at least the quantity of it that is required for a healthy life, is more than probably gained by reasonable outdoor life rather than soaking up the sun as an end in itself.

I am also well aware that white people trying to go brown is a relatively recent activity – at least by choice.  Up until the early years of the twentieth century white skin was the more highly prized; brown skin merely indicating that you worked outdoors and were one of the great unwashed.  But the ‘healthy outdoor types’ managed to equate brown skin (on white people) with good living and harmony with life.

In any discussions of skin colour and the vast industry that encourages the acquisition of a tint, I am reminded of the back page of a magazine that I subscribed to in college: The New Internationalist.  This magazine was the child of the ‘militant’ wing of Oxfam: Third World First or 3W1.  I signed a standing order for the magazine over fifty years ago and the money still dribbles into Oxfam’s funds – though the magazine has long since departed.  Or, at least, they don’t send me it anymore!

Anyway, one of the more memorable back covers of the magazine showed two advertisements.  The first was for a proprietary sun tan oil, while the second was a Nigerian (?) skin lightning advert.  Of course, apart from the obvious irony in such a juxtaposition, there was also the fact that the first advert had ‘white’ people and the second ‘black’ people and the ‘white’ people in the first advert were actually darker than the ‘black’ people in the second!  I have not been able to find the original advert, but have illustrated a contemporary one!

One doesn’t need to labour the obvious idiocy in the activity, or the social and political overtones, but I have to admit that I feel healthier when I am tanned.

Yes, I know that my ‘feelings’ are constructed by a vast and all-powerful advertising industry that cares little for my well being and everything about the bottom line – but, even knowing how manipulated I have been and am being, I shall continue to laze in the sun in the hope that this year will be the one in which the ‘honey skin’ of my longing becomes visual reality.

It's a goal of sorts!