Monday, January 29, 2007

lesson from 4-year old

Recently, I've been reading to S her new favorite story. This began as a traumatic experience.

S's new favorite story is one that I remember hearing when I was little. In fact, it was burned into my childhood memory because it scared the six-or-seven-year-old me. For years, I vaguely remembered the story but not the title. S cleared that up; it's called Tailypo. In short, it's the story of an old geezer-hermit who cuts off the tail of some strange animal, eats it, and the animal comes after him looking for the tail and makes him disappear. I recalled how frightened that book made me when I read it to S. And, I thought that she would get scared and not want to hear it anymore. But no. She loves it, and we now play "tailypo" games.

The difference: she identifies with the creature and I identified with the geezer-hermit. If only I had come up with this reorientation when I was 7 or 8. I would have saved myself so much anxiety.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

you don't often hear someone write, "I identified with the geezer-hermit." That made me smile. thank you. :)

Cabiria said...

S. gives me hope for the revolution. Questioning capitalism and identifying with the oppressed? Awesome.

Dolce Vita said...

Her powers of revision (in this case because we were supposed to identify with the geezer) are astounding. This could prove to be an incredible headache for us.