| Winging It |
| What did Leonardo da Vinci love doing most: writing, painting, or flying? Flying, said my daughter quite resolutely, 'cos he couldn't. Who in the world would even come up with such a question, you'd think - but she who did has her own dreams, allowing my daughter to share some of them by asking the question. |
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I'd simply love to be a good educator, but I'm not so sure that I am. In fact, I'll be the first to confess that I'm not. That makes the confession a pleasure in its own right. However, harsh everyday reality starts just beyond the horizon of self-satisfaction. Listen and weep. My daughter made a wish. What was that, I said, making her repeat it, which as such spells trouble, for why should I abuse the poetic side of fatherhood to this extent if there was nothing in it for me personally? Is it alright for me to put salt on a slug? Beg your pardon? Is it alright for me to put salt on a slug? (In Dutch, someone who "puts salt on all slugs" is the kind of person who finds fault with everything.) Er … I rapidly checked what options I had at my disposal. Of course I should have said loudly and clearly, Are you out of your flipping mind, except that I don't think that such a response fosters any understanding, and understanding is the only thing that will do you any good in future. I admit that I haven't quite worked it out yet. Why would you want to do that? Because T. (her friend) says that slugs dissolve if you put salt on them. That's not quite how it works, I started. Salt, you see, attracts water, and slugs are just like people, 99% of them is made up of water, so the salt takes away all their water and then they die. Oh dear, I remember thinking, try again. My daughter is nothing if not consistent whenever it suits her. But is it alright if I do? I heaved a sigh and said, alright then, for I feel that people should be allowed up to a point to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, otherwise everything is reduced to theory. I once said the same thing in English, although I'm not sure to this day that my audience wasn't convinced I was lecturing on nouvelle cuisine. But you have to do it, she said. Why wasn't I surprised at this turn of events? The message had in fact already got through to the point where she had cottoned on to the fact that it wasn't a done thing what she was suggesting, and so - and I can only hope that this was some kind of innate efficacy on her part which I lack - she retreated to "attendant status", thus ensuring that she could not be held accountable for the moral implications. And in so far as she had consciously or otherwise anticipated my educational attempts while doing so, I can only say that she had pretty much hit the nail on the head. It was a dreadful sight. The fist obstacle was a clogged-up salt cellar, but that is easily fixed. Having received its second dose, the slug reared itself as if it was about to burst into song. I have observed quite a few slugs in my time, but none of them have ever attempted to sing arias. My daughter shuddered: Is it dying? I didn't know how to answer her. Has a slug already died by the time it's being eaten by its fellow slugs after I've stepped on it, or could it be that the salt acts as a kind of anaesthetic? One should never tell a lie, so I kept all these deliberations to myself. I would, however, beseech you to allow me to hope that this one sacrifice has ensured the safety of all the world's slugs from my daughter, for ever more. |