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botiasMy grandmother lives on the edge of a college town. A lip of pasture flanked by industrial property. What tickles me is the way people respond to the horse. I've been taking care of her lawn so I've been out and about to see people make much of him as they walk by. One day a mini-van full of folks pulled up. They had brought their out-of-town guests to see 'the horse' the way other folks might show off a local monument or a favorite restaurant. ???? It's not like he's the Black Stallion or anything. Just a roan gelding.
Today, a young woman walked up to him and spent 10 or 15 minutes stroking and scratching, hugging his big solid neck. He's a bit lonely I think, no other horses, and an owner who is only now admitting that he doesn't have time for rodeoing any more, and he really seemed to enjoy the attention. He stood at the corner and watched her walk away.
The red airplane was back again. A little red underwing jobbie with a white stripe. The pilot flies it the way people probably imagine flying when they first wish they could. Swooping and turning and wagging her wings. It makes me smile, I waved broadly to it.
Today, a young woman walked up to him and spent 10 or 15 minutes stroking and scratching, hugging his big solid neck. He's a bit lonely I think, no other horses, and an owner who is only now admitting that he doesn't have time for rodeoing any more, and he really seemed to enjoy the attention. He stood at the corner and watched her walk away.
The red airplane was back again. A little red underwing jobbie with a white stripe. The pilot flies it the way people probably imagine flying when they first wish they could. Swooping and turning and wagging her wings. It makes me smile, I waved broadly to it.
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Date: 2006-07-28 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 09:53 pm (UTC)You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.
It's cool in a way, but I think how we treat our 'fellow adventurers' is much more important than the journey. It always seems like it's men that have the luxury of these sorts of airy notions. It reminds me of Thoreau a bit.
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Date: 2006-07-28 09:04 pm (UTC)And nifty, with the airplane. Someday...
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Date: 2006-07-28 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-29 05:30 am (UTC)I see MLPs as far less damaging to developing female psyches than, well, any kind of humanish doll, except maybe those wossnames, not Duplo, they aren't Legos... enh, I can't remember them, but anyway, little people that are pretty damn androgynous.
(when I was, oh... 13, therabouts, I swiped my cousin's [she was then around 5, I think] My Little Pony - it was Cotton Candy - and made a little cardboard house for it, complete with furniture and windows, and braided the hair, and made little pony accessories for it, mostly out of pipe cleaner, and hid it under my bed. I admit, I am deeply warped. This would be the same time in my life when I was systematically dismembering what few Barbie-ish dolls had been given to me [generally by misguided relatives], half on a pretext to see "how they work" [the hair plugs and elbow/leg joints were interesting], half out of some vague feeling of budding feminist abhorrence. Also during the time of my life when, if the Internet had existed [and I thank all the gods and little fishes that it didn't dear god the angst], I would have been writing Thundercats fanfic which would haunt me to this day.)
... that was a ridiculously long parenthetical aside, wasn't it? I must be feelin' punchy tonight!
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Date: 2006-07-29 06:17 pm (UTC)I still tease my mom about the Christmas when my new grandparents got me Barbies and a doll house. :) I'm much too mature nowadays to whine about my brother getting the chemistry set, however. I prefered to play with animal toys. A family of dogs came to live in the doll house.
Have spent some time with developing kids, I think the important thing is to let kids be who they are and like what they like. Is trying to nudge them into being neuter really any better than trying to nudge them to be more masculine or more feminine than they would wish? To me gender is morally neutral, so I don't feel like it's something I need to do as a parent to attempt to mold them in this area.
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Date: 2006-07-29 09:40 pm (UTC)But yah, I disdained traditional boy- and girl-typical toys for animals. It's certainly possible to make a case for stuffed animals and model horses being "girl" toys, but I strongly avoided any toys with any semblance of... overt gender markings, or anything I thought of as too cute (little dresses/suits, hearts for eyes, that kind of thing).
Actually, given a choice, I liked making my own toys. I had a hell of a collection of found objects turned into toys in my pre- and pubescent years.
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Date: 2006-07-29 10:49 pm (UTC)I let them play with what they like, but I was surprised to the extent they prefer traditional boy toys in the absense of television or shopping malls, and the way they went ballistic over heavy machinery even before they could talk. When they make their own toys they are always weapons or space ships or ghosts or dangerous animals or carnivorous plants. I don't see a lot of 'teh pretty'.
From an evolutionary standpoint I would be surprised to find that most people weren't born with a strong sense of what their sex is and a strong desire to learn their culture's gender role. It seems like the sort of thing that would affect reproductive success what with it being all bound up with sex and sexual attraction and status, yada, yada.
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Date: 2006-07-29 11:03 pm (UTC)Evolution is a mean, nasty, non-PC bitch. She doesn't care what people want to be; she cares about what people need to be. There's also mounting evidence that homosexuality is an evolutionary response to overpopulation; when you have too many kids for the environment to support, it makes sense to have some of your potential breeding stock not be interested in breeding, but still be intersted in raising or helping to raise offspring.
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Date: 2006-07-30 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-29 06:48 pm (UTC)That would be the greatest thing ever though, to read Erin's early teen Thundercat fan fiction. :D
I don't think I'm cool enough to qualify as warped. I think I'm just dirtybadwrong in a terribly commonplace way. Fanfic to me is mostly an opportunity to go places that the original creators had too much taste and decorum to go.
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Date: 2006-07-29 09:44 pm (UTC)In my knotted-up little hindbrain, geeky, kinky, and sexy are all braided together into seriously strange configurations.