We Spent Our Childhoods Being Told

We spent our childhoods being told by books and by movies and by cartoons that if we were just good enough, true of heart enough, curious and eager enough, bright-eyed enough – everything that children in storybooks are and everything that’s overlooked in real children – we would stumble across lands populated entirely by talking animals, discover underground caves full of treasure, have our cuts and bruises healed by magicians, fly through the air on the back of softly scaled dragons, and maybe, just maybe, become the ruler or leader of a land full of tiny thankful creatures; elves, maybe, or gnomes.

We tried to be true of heart, and curious, and eager, and all those things; we looked in the unlikeliest of places, hoping for magic. Mysterious doors set in the sides of buildings without porches – only invisible flying people must use these! Rabbit-sized holes in the sand at the city beach – must be sandcrabs who’ve eaten growth powder! Dog-shaped clouds – some very tall giant must be up there shaping them!

And as for the good enough part, and the true of heart part – we even did these, though more grudgingly, and certainly in private. No kid wants another kid to see him being a goody-goody, so I don’t know what anyone else did, but I would go outside after rainstorms and move the worms from the sidewalk so they wouldn’t dry out in the sun. It must have been years before the inkling slipped from my head that someday, while I was sleeping, the Worm King (complete with crown) would appear on my bed, awaken me, and proclaim me savior of WormLand. I would travel down into the dirt with the Worm King and pass vast chambers of bowing worms on my way to the throne they’d been saving just for me.

Then I would be shown a feast of feasts – a sumptuous, mind-boggling feast of foods never before seen by man (but somehow suitable for his digestive system) and let alone to sleep the rest of the night on a mattress made from layers and layers of the finest silkworm’s silk.

What did I get, though? What did we all get? Silk mattresses from the worm king? Dragon rides over the South Pacific? A gift of our very own invisible wings? Sumptuous feasts and cross-species storytelling?

No. We got adulthood. We got our parents telling us there was no Santa Claus once we were deemed too old for him. We got our stuffed animals being stuffed into plastic bags and given to the Salvation Army. And being true of heart, being eager, being curious, suddenly became being idle, being lazy, wasting time. Digging holes in the sand to find sandcrabs just wasn’t cute anymore, and it wasn’t tolerated until we had finished our math homework.

What kind of child-rearing philosophy is this, anyway? Whose idea was it to use magical creatures and stories as bait to create good, giving, open-hearted children, and then whisk them away and hope that the goodness would remain on its own? Did no one think bitterness and disillusionment would go along with the whisking away? That they would blame the world for misrepresenting itself? Did no one wonder how the children would feel as thirty-year-olds when they went to a beach and realized there was no reason to dig down into the sand? These thirty-year-olds will drink instead; down their piña coladas and doze and try to tan and think about swimming but only that, think, because there’s so many reasons not to, you know? Wet hair, wet clothes, sand sticking wetly to skin, and then sandy clothes. You’d have to take a shower or something. Too much trouble.

No, I get the original idea. I understand the motivation and I can understand how whoever thought it up thought it would go. As our minds matured, we were supposed to transfer our imaginations into something more honed and practical. We were supposed to appreciate the value of ordinary things without sticking long, trailing tale tails on them. They expected us to think: ‘I wonder what made that burrow under the roots of that tree. Hey! I should become a naturalist!’ Or, ‘That door that’s half-underground sure is bizarre… hey, I should become an architect and find out why anyone would build such a thing!’ Our thoughts were supposed to start gravitating towards what we will spend our practical adult life doing. They were not supposed to continue in the ‘perhaps that large burrow leads to an underground kingdom or a parallel universe’ vein.

The jump, though, seemed jarring to us. There’s nowhere that feels right for the sudden jump to straight logic and no lingering doubts. When I was fourteen I still winced at handling my stuffed animals in such a way that, were they alive, would kill them. I didn’t drop them on their heads, I didn’t throw them, I didn’t stuff them into suitcases, and I didn’t roll over on them in my sleep. I didn’t launder them or allow anyone else to launder them. Sometimes I would try, because my adult’s mind was butting in, telling me that I should be able to do these things without cringing, but my hands, my body, wouldn’t obey. There was still an off chance in my heart that they were alive and they were begging me mutely, like a pet, to take care of them and not to hurt them.

Even when we were children, eight or nine, we would have to psych ourselves up with a healthy dose of group insanity to be able to play the game where we toss our dolls into a moving ceiling fan to see where they’d be flung. And afterwards, we would all be depressed, preoccupied. I don’t know what anyone else was thinking, but I was waiting for them to leave so I could apologize to my dolls.

I miss having that now, that intense unconditional respect for helpless creatures or invisible kings. I miss it being revered as a quality and I think it still should. We’re not really supposed to have respect for anything intangible, with the notable exception of God. It’s not frowned upon, exactly, but it’s seen as kooky and a little bit stupid to be superstitious or to expect to find unknown magic everywhere we look.

To have respect for people and things, not in spite of, but because of the fact that we have absolute power over them – this fades in adulthood, and must be engineered to fade in adulthood. If it didn’t, where would we find our slaughterhouse workers? How would we make our engineers designing oil lines to slash through old-growth forests?

We wouldn’t. The slaughterhouse workers would secretly pardon animals whenever they could; pigs and cows would constantly be found running free in nearby forests. They might only do it because they thought the pigs and cows might come back with their friends and provide them with lifelong meat and milk, but they would still do it, because that’s what happens in fairy tales: save someone’s life and they’ll reward you handsomely. Whether that someone is an animal or a human or even an inanimate object, you will be rewarded.

The engineers assigned to the pipeline task would see agonized faces on all the trees, all the animals fleeing their habitat, and they would up and quit, only to be scarcely seen from then on. Well, of course! They’d have a cozy mansion sky-high in the highest branches of the redwoods and millions of sparrow and squirrel friends to cater to their every need.

And, tell me, what good would that do society?