it's about time-binding
Aug. 5th, 2009 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThis is sort of a part 2 to last week's Mythcon report: some thoughts on my encounters with children there, and what it says about the different meaning of time to children and adults.
1. For several years I was occupied with helping a friend with a major project. During that time I frequently visited her home a few hundred miles from here and stayed with her and her family. I already knew her husband well, and during this time I got to know their small daughter. She was about three when the work moved into full gear. I like small children anyway, and it seemed to me that if I was going to take over large quantities of Mommy's attention with boring grown-up stuff, I owed the child long stretches of compensatory playtime. And the child and her parents felt the same way.
(Playing with small children, by the way, is not always as difficult as the child-phobic may think. You just stand there and go along with whatever play-acting the kid is coming up with, while, if you're in the front yard for instance, making sure she doesn't run into the street.)
The major project - which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award last year, so all that work was worthwhile - and some ancillary activities eventually ground their way to a conclusion, and I paid my most recent long visit a year and a half ago. This coincided with the child's sixth birthday. I gave her the obvious A.A. Milne book as a present, and was rewarded by hearing her read aloud for what I was told was the first time at home.
Since then I've seen my friends only twice, the latest time at Mythcon. The girl is now seven and a half, and swings around Beverly Cleary novels (excellent choice) with confident assurance. But I gathered from such brief interactions as we had in the middle of a busy conference that she does not remember me.*
This is a little sad, and a little disconcerting: it's like trying to make friends with that guy from Memento. But it shouldn't be unexpected. It doesn't seem that long to me, but the space from 6 to 7 1/2 is enormous in a child's development. Most people can't remember much from before they were about six, and, well, it's a big change.
2. Here's an etiquette question for you. You're at a convention, and an old friend you haven't seen much in ten or twelve years comes by, accompanied by a young lady of 17 whom you realize must be his daughter whom you haven't seen since she was ... um, quite. About the age of the girl in the previous anecdote. What do you say to her?
a) "My, how you've grown!"
b) "Oh my god, I'm getting old!"
c) "Hi, you must be Julia. I'm![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
calimac. Haven't seen you in a while."
From my memories of my own childhood, most of my parents' friends would have chosen option A. Most of the people on this occasion chose option B. I chose option C.
One other thing I remember from childhood is that, while I got visibly older and more mature every year - which struck me then as normal - adults stayed pretty much the same - which struck me then as strange. I've tried to remember that since I crossed to the other side of the barricade, and don't act all surprised-like when children grow up within the span of time they're expected to. And what exactly is a 17-year-old supposed to make of a bunch of people her parents' or grandparents' age moaning about how old they are? What kind of picture of impending adulthood does that paint? Here's a clue, grownups: it's not all about you.
3. The really spooky story at Mythcon about childhood meeting adulthood was told bycoppervale in his banquet speech and again here.
*It only now occurs to me that I should have started a conversation by pointing to the novel and saying, "You know, I've met the lady who wrote that book." We went to the same library school, and she came back and paid a visit while I was a student there.
1. For several years I was occupied with helping a friend with a major project. During that time I frequently visited her home a few hundred miles from here and stayed with her and her family. I already knew her husband well, and during this time I got to know their small daughter. She was about three when the work moved into full gear. I like small children anyway, and it seemed to me that if I was going to take over large quantities of Mommy's attention with boring grown-up stuff, I owed the child long stretches of compensatory playtime. And the child and her parents felt the same way.
(Playing with small children, by the way, is not always as difficult as the child-phobic may think. You just stand there and go along with whatever play-acting the kid is coming up with, while, if you're in the front yard for instance, making sure she doesn't run into the street.)
The major project - which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award last year, so all that work was worthwhile - and some ancillary activities eventually ground their way to a conclusion, and I paid my most recent long visit a year and a half ago. This coincided with the child's sixth birthday. I gave her the obvious A.A. Milne book as a present, and was rewarded by hearing her read aloud for what I was told was the first time at home.
Since then I've seen my friends only twice, the latest time at Mythcon. The girl is now seven and a half, and swings around Beverly Cleary novels (excellent choice) with confident assurance. But I gathered from such brief interactions as we had in the middle of a busy conference that she does not remember me.*
This is a little sad, and a little disconcerting: it's like trying to make friends with that guy from Memento. But it shouldn't be unexpected. It doesn't seem that long to me, but the space from 6 to 7 1/2 is enormous in a child's development. Most people can't remember much from before they were about six, and, well, it's a big change.
2. Here's an etiquette question for you. You're at a convention, and an old friend you haven't seen much in ten or twelve years comes by, accompanied by a young lady of 17 whom you realize must be his daughter whom you haven't seen since she was ... um, quite. About the age of the girl in the previous anecdote. What do you say to her?
a) "My, how you've grown!"
b) "Oh my god, I'm getting old!"
c) "Hi, you must be Julia. I'm
calimac. Haven't seen you in a while."From my memories of my own childhood, most of my parents' friends would have chosen option A. Most of the people on this occasion chose option B. I chose option C.
One other thing I remember from childhood is that, while I got visibly older and more mature every year - which struck me then as normal - adults stayed pretty much the same - which struck me then as strange. I've tried to remember that since I crossed to the other side of the barricade, and don't act all surprised-like when children grow up within the span of time they're expected to. And what exactly is a 17-year-old supposed to make of a bunch of people her parents' or grandparents' age moaning about how old they are? What kind of picture of impending adulthood does that paint? Here's a clue, grownups: it's not all about you.
3. The really spooky story at Mythcon about childhood meeting adulthood was told by
coppervale in his banquet speech and again here.*It only now occurs to me that I should have started a conversation by pointing to the novel and saying, "You know, I've met the lady who wrote that book." We went to the same library school, and she came back and paid a visit while I was a student there.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-06 06:31 am (UTC)I am, however, reminded of a family wedding, probably some time in the 1980s, when my brother and I were in our 30s. An old family connection saw us for the first time in perhaps a decade or more. She turned to my mother and said, "Isabell! We've gotten so old!"
"Dorothy," said my mother, "it took us a long time."