Was I older than this?
Was I older than this?
Here's the memory
I’m under the kitchen table of my family's home. There are the legs and feet of four adults, eight legs in all, who are sitting in chairs around me, talking to each other. The floor is smooth and cool, made of black and white checkerboard tiles. I am very happy, playing with a new rattle with a bright red ball inside.
Then the momentous occurs.
I try to stand up, and I can’t.
This does not frighten me. I become downright elated. I’m overjoyed!
I know that I can’t stand because I have grown too tall to fit under the table without crouching.
When I was trying to choose a memory to write about for #silverbloggers current contest, this one came to mind right away. At first, I thought this event too dull for a post. Then I looked up what age I must have been, and it all got far more interesting.
This memory is more vivid than any other of my childhood memories. I remember how I felt, that the floor was smooth and cool, what color things were, and that I felt very safe. I know I was under a table that was seated with four adults two of whom were my mother and father, and playing with a new toy. I am inestimably joyous. But most curiously, I fully understood that I was growing, and had finally grown too tall to stand under that particular table.
How old must one be to have such a sophisticated understanding of the concept of growth? I wondered. To find out, I got out a tape measure and measured the distance from the floor to the underside of the kitchen table I am sitting at right now.
29 inches.
I then searched for a growth chart. When I found out the age at which a female child is 29 inches tall on average, I was shocked – less than 15 months!
Allowing for the fact that I am a diminutive person now, and may have been as a baby, I could stretch that a bit. Perhaps I was fully 15 months, still a baby, not yet a toddler.
I knew about happiness, I knew about smoothness and newness and babies and tables and adults gabbing around a kitchen table. I understood numbers. I knew enough about those things then, for this memory to be crystal clear now, nearly 65 years later.
Here is a picture of me at 17 months, a good two months after this earliest memory!
We think of the very young as un-knowledgeable, empty vessels that need to be filled by the older and more knowledgeable humans in their lives. But perhaps we have got that very wrong. Perhaps those vessels are born filled with innate understandings that we unlearn as we grow older.
As a toddler, I could do algebra that many tenth graders struggle with, gauging my growth as a function of time. No one had to teach me.
As a toddler, I knew texture, temperature, color, distance, and time. No one had to explain these to me.
As a toddler, I knew infinite joy. Happiness and love had not yet been hobbled in me.
Perhaps we vessels are connected to nature's intelligence when we are born, and are torn away from it as we are “taught” or “molded” or “disciplined” or “guided”.
Perhaps we "grown ups" would do better to let our children teach us as they grow, in an un-schooling environment. I think we adults could do with some un-schooling ourselves, or de-schooling. Perhaps we must un-teach ourselves what we have been taught, to know the world as we did when we were first born, before various slave systems imposed themselves on us.
In so doing, I believe we could connect to our true selves, and fully experience the infinite.
Much love to us all.
Amazing!! I love the realization of having grown to tall to stand under the table - reminds me of the years I'd sit on a church pew, feet dangling, wondering when they'd ever touch the floor. The day it happened, of course, I didn't even notice.
But what to do with this:
What kind of genius art thou?? OMG!!!
In high school, I couldn't do tenth grade algebra.... but let us dwell on better things. Like the joy of a toddler. :)
You never run out of fresh, original material!
Yes, let us dwell on the joy of a toddler, and let us dwell in it ourselves. (I love a good preposition switch)
I suspect that when you were 15 months old, you understood this concept too. I think we all do.
And I do run out. I had to recharge for quite a while for this one. I do not know how folks write a daily thoughtful post.
Your comment has delighted me. Oh joy!
Excellent points and good investigative work on your age. Imagine unschooling from the beginning. We could exercise our natural creativity, be allowed to explore and learn naturally.
I know people that can't remember anything before the age of five. To me this is unreal. Thanks for sharing.
I was very surprised myself!
I'm certain human beings would be astonishing creatures if we were not squelched by education and indoctrination.
Thanks for stopping by...
That book Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing by A.S. Neill
And of course, institutionalized education just kept going, while "freestyle" self-led learning fell by the wayside.
Here I go again, adding comment after comment. But this explains more, for those who won't bother to click on a link:
I read this book in the 70's! I gave a copy to my father! I had forgotten all about it. Maybe it's time to revisit it.
I think there are many people following this method of education now. Unschooling. I wish I had done that with my own children, but as a product of much institutionalized education (in mathematics as it turned out), I could not see any other way. And the schools did a tremendous amount of harm to the entire family. It sometimes bothers me that my eldest is in that field.
I hear you!
Tim's nephew married a woman who's one of eight children (four brothers, four sisters), all of whom were home schooled. Most became apprentices to the family's business (something involving farm equipment). One is now a nun at a convent in Missouri, where they've been harassed with drive-by shootings and stalkers watching the nuns at work (nuns on tractors! Why not charge admission!) - and now they are putting up a tall wall for privacy and safety. This is real. This will never make mainstream media. Christians, mostly white - who cares, right?
#Unschooled - that would be my preference, too.
Our Founding Fathers were home schooled or had tutors in the home. Institutionalized, public education is a fairly new thing, born of the Industrial Revolution. Gotta raise us some good, docile workers for all those factories and offices!
A book on ADHD made me feel good by pointing out that most entrpreneurs and bosses tend to fit under the ADHD label. Hunters. The workers are the Gatherers.
But that's a whole 'nother topic.
ADHD is a made up disease. Most diseases are these days, especially anything involving mental health. The pharmaceutical industry wants us all to focus on what is wrong with us, and to sink our money into their toxic drugs.
Indeed! The previous term for ADHD was healthy, active, energetic, enterprising, alert, curious, multi-tasking, "NORMAL" child!
This was a lovely trip down your memory lane, and you definitely were a very cute, intuitive, and dare I say mischievous looking child :D
The thoughts regarding "unlearning" things as we grow older under heavy indoctrination is something I very much agree with you on, and when I talk to people about this, I notice a natural aversion to accepting that idea. I wonder why folks have a hard time accepting that we are programmed?
Great post, I'm glad I caught it before payout. I suck at keeping up with posts.
Me too! I follow too many accounts, and have to remember to go directly to folk's blogs, such as your two. I wish people did not get a notice when we unfollow them!
Mischievousness was indoctrinated out of me by the time I was 7 or 8. I had learned to unquestioningly obey any adult by then. Passive aggressive though, I got pretty good at that.
It's good that you still have your photos from as a child, many of us have already lost them when we are teenagers.
you're an awesome toddler that every mother wants in this world @owasco and it's amazing you can remember it all... I put my childhood memories somewhere else, and it's hard to recall it back
I believe all babies are born with an intelligence that we do not recognize. I didn't mean for this post to be a brag post about me! We can all do this at early ages. Even dogs can do this. Throw a stick where it's windy, and you will see the dog account for the wind to catch it. That's freaking calculus that dog is doing.
hahaha.. i'm not doing those calculus things... because all i can remember through some old pictures, I was so lazy to walk and busy with my wool blanket, sniffing on every end of it, LOL. I envy you still.. you can remember everything.
You just reminded me of a long lost memory. I loved this stupid pillow, I called it the "hot dog" and I went nowhere without it. I think this thing comforted me until I went to college, when my dumb little sister threw it out. I am still, almost 50 years later, mad at her for that! lol
hahahahhaaha.... what's with the pillow, my lil sister still keep it till this time and a nephew still keeping a piece of clothes that had wore out and stingky. is that kinda obsession compulsive something but not disorder, LOL
I have actually lost the black and white photographs of myself while I was a kid. So sad. Wow, to know algebra as a toddler, you must be a genius
I'll bet we all can do algebra at an early age, and we are un-taught it when start having to memorize facts.
Dogs can do calculus really. If you toss a stick into the ocean, a good fetcher can calculate where it will end up and head the stick off - it won't go the direction you threw the stick. Natural intelligence.
Bummer about your photographs! I'm moving, and I came across them during my stuff purge.
Very cool memory! I have very very few memories of childhood...
I have very few too, actually. This one has always been there for me though.
Is your lack of memory Lyme related? I have a close friend with this problem, but hers is more of a problem with short term. She seems to remember way-back stuff.
Yes, it's Lyme neuro issues. Short term is bad, but long term is gone.
That explains why you are so good at taking notes. And must be terrible.
Well, yes, both. If it doesn't get written down, it's gone forever. That's why I am so "organized". It's all I have for a memory.
Reblogged for the wonderful conversations this has sparked on learning and education.
Thanks! A much needed conversation. I recently heard that enrollments in pre-k and k programs are down 13%!
You mean we are born smart and it's all downhill after that? Thanks for the memories.. @owasco
Close. We are all born smart. Then we get messed with. The good news is that all that knowledge is still in there. Thanks for stopping by!
Very interesting way to look at the early years of life. The memories of being a toddler have faded over the years, but the moments I do remember are brought to my consciousness by an event or happenstance.
As adults, we tend to think a child's mind needs to be filled with our beliefs.
Communicating via words takes several years to develop, but one shouldn't take the inability of a baby to be able to verbalize as a lack of knowledge.
You have an amazing memory but that moment must have been good to stick in your memory bank!
I agree that we could develop better if each one of us were allowed to develop at our own pace and within our own capabilities.
Thank you for a thought-provoking #bow