The Fidget

My son has always been one who needed to know how things work and what everything does. I took delivery of a new car recently. I was very pleased with it even though it was the same make as my last one it had so many things that were very different. I invited him out for a drive in it so that he could experience first hand what it was like. As we drove along all I could see on my dashboard were lights coming on and going off as he pressed every button the car had.


When he was very young we and friends selected presents for him on the basis of their fidget value. This fidgeting had no bounds. Clocks were taken apart never to be put together again. One day he was found sitting in front of the kitchen cupboard. All the tins were lying in front of him with a nice neat bundle of labels. So we knew what was in that cupboard but we did not know in what tin was what. Some of the tins we managed to guess others it was impossible. So for the next few weeks it was a case of, “Lets open a can and see what we are having tonight.”

I remember when I became a teacher in the first school I taught in. The head teacher told me I would get a weekly bulletin telling me about students with discipline problems. She thought this would be a great help to me. I asked her if it would be ok to delay those for a bit. She asked my why. I said I would rather not label the students, would prefer to take them as I found them. Told her I was not afraid to face whatever came my way. When I eventually did get those reports how glad I was I had not seen them, they were talking about students I did not recognise as the ones in my class. I taught for almost 20 years and I can count on the fingers of one hand (and I have to I am hopeless at counting) the times I had a problem with a student.

We are too fast to label people and when we do they often live up to the label. Without the labels they are full of surprises and they often surprise themselves.

Labels belong on cans in cupboards they sure do not belong on people. Maybe if we forgot that we were abstract painters we might find we painted good seascapes and so on. I am aware that some friends who visit my blog do not like abstract art and I respect that.

The abstract used above is discussed at :- The Painting With no Label