Because sometimes there’s no need.
I work in a school. And there was this small boy at playtime whose entire 30 minute break was taken up with a single task. To hit the ground, with a stick. This boy isn’t mentally impaired or anything, he’s not the top of his class but he’s definitely not the bottom. But he sat there silently with a smile on his face, and every few minutes, just… WHACK!
I don’t know what his motivation was for hitting the ground with a stick, but I know he looked like he was having more fun than anyone else there.
We had sports day recently, and I was the one in charge of holding the ribbon, and shouting out to the winners, “Congratulations! That’s 20 points for you!” so I’ve seen them run. I’ve seen them when they’re really going for it. And now when I stand there in the playground, with my first aid box with the missing bandages, it’s so different. The race and the chase.
The boys and the girls run around after each other. And at first I was comforted by the sheer joy of just running as fast as you possibly could, for no reason. Just running in a group. But by my third week of playground duty I start to notice. They aren’t running as fast as they can. At first I thought this was because often when they do, an adult will step in and shout “slow down!” but it isn’t. I’ve never told anyone to slow down. And I can still see it.
It made me think of water fights when I was little. I fucking loved water fights, everybody did I think. I even still love the idea of a water fight, every so often I get the urge to put one together in the park outside my house. But when I think about it properly, I remember the grim realisation…
That water fights are only fun if you pretend you’re scared.
There are no rules in a water fight. Nobody wins a water fight. And getting wet doesn’t hurt. It happens once and the damage is done. But you carry on playing for hours, pretending you’re afraid of getting wet. If you’re not afraid, then where’s the fun? The kids are doing it too, they run slower than they need to. They know they can outrun that girl with the grazed knee, but they have to pretend they don’t in order to enjoy themselves.
And the teacher is doing it too. That teacher across the playground, with the laminated colour cards, doesn’t give a shit about the kid running around. And if she does, she’s definitely not angry about it. But she has to shout “slow down!” like he talked about her sister. I’ve spoken to the other teachers, and they don’t really care if you have an apple in the classroom. They just pretend to be offended by the flecks of juice on the table that you wipe up with your bare arm. And nobody seems to care about messy houses, but still everyone assumes that everyone else will care. You’re not disgusting. We’re just pretending you are.
So is romance the same? Do we only enjoy the flirting because we pretend we’re scared of it? There’s fear of loneliness, there’s fear of commitment. There’s fear of rejection, and I once knew a girl who was afraid of being considered attractive. But she still went out there. They all did. They all do.
I know people who tell me that if someone asks them out they’re no longer interested. I tell them they’re idiots, but that’s beside the point. People sometimes say it’s the challenge of it, but who are they defeating? The other person who’s probably as happy about it as they are?
I sometimes wonder, what would my classroom be like if the kids just realised that truth we hope they never figure out. That it doesn’t really matter if we tell them off. What does it do? It does nothing. If they ever figured out that the worst we can do (and should be able to do, by the way, this isn’t me advocating anything else) is to give them an arbitrary, meaningless sentence, they’d run the place.
Being told off hurts. But only if you take it at the surface and don’t think about it. And rejection hurts too, but for the same reason. It’s not like if they reject you you’ve missed out on that loving committed relationship you’ve always dreamed of, if they reject you it means it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, because they’re not interested. You’ve not lost anything, you’ve actually gained the months you would have spent discovering that.
So does rejection only hurt because we pretend it does? In order to make the endless crossing off of potential names more palatable? More fun? I don’t know. Maybe that is part of why you always wonder what would happen if you talked to that guy on the train but you never do. Maybe that’s why it’s fun to flirt with that girl you know you’re not really interested in.
But I’m not a cynic. I think there are some really wonderful people out there, I think love is real and I think that the love that actually happens, to real people, is exactly as romantic and interesting as the love we cook up in our teenage brains because there’s nothing else to think about.
And if you’re reading this thinking I’m an idiot, then you’re not alone. There are plenty of people who think I just don’t get it and that life is chaos and misery. But I’m fucking telling you, there’s a boy over in the corner there, who doesn’t seem to be pretending anything. He’s just hitting the ground with a stick, and smiling.
And I think I know why.
Breakfast Epiphanies 