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"- I think there is one habit,-- I said to our company
a day or two afterwards--worse than that of punning.
It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for
words which truly characterize their objects. I have
known several very genteel idiots whose whole
vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen
expressions. All things fell into one of two great
categories,-- FAST or SLOW. Man's chief end was to
be a BRICK. When the great calamities of life overtook
their friends, these last were spoken of as being a
GOOD DEAL CUT UP. Nine-tenths of human existence
were summed up in the single word, BORE. These
expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds
which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate.
They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;
--you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes
no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon
which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing
smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational
fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I
undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word
or phrase....
- The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and
said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for
"goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words
myself just when I pleased.
- I replied with my usual forbearance.--Certainly, to give
up the algebraic symbol, because A or B is often a cover
for ideal nihility, would be unwise.
I have heard a child laboring to express a certain
condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation
(as it supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently
explained by the participle--BORED. "
....Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
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I have watched a baby-boy (my son, Sonoo) and a baby-girl (my granddaughter, Ishani) very closely as they grew up from the age of 5 months when they were struggling to learn some sort of locomotion.
You will freely admit that their anatomy is quite different from their very birth. So, it is no wonder that their psychology too is different, and as they grow up, their aptitudes, likes and dislikes, the games they prefer to play, their maturity are also quite different.
No one need accuse me of being an MCP (Male Chauvinist Pig).
When I placed a toy "bat and ball" and a toy "gas-burner and cooker" ahead of them and asked them to crawl and pick one of them, Sonoo always picked up the bat and ball, while Ishani invariably grabbed the kitchen-set.
There must be sense in this...I guess Ishani closely watched her mom cooking in the kitchen with Ishani upon her waist and intuited that her mom wields the Real Power in the household; while Sonoo refused to enter the kitchen and preferred to play useless bat & ball with his dad.
When I was alone and had to eat to survive, I preferred a hostel with a mess attached to it. Whenever forced to cook a meal for myself, I just boiled some rice and fried a couple of potatos (my son can do with just a couple of eggs to order). On the other hand, when my wife was left alone and had to cook and eat, she rarely skipped making her 4-course meal.
Sonoo rarely asked me to tell stories at his age of 2. But Ishani can be brought to attention by just one remark: "Come! I will tell you a story". Girl kids must be more interested in intellectual affairs than boys till, say, about the age when Nature ties them down.
Child Specialists tell us that the age between 1.5 years (when they have done with the adventure of learning to run on their feet) till about 3 years (when they go to school...a life-altering experience) is known as the "age of tantrums".
I am convinced that kids in this period throw tantrums because they are bored and do not find life challenging enough...even the advent of TV serials like Tom & Jerry and Popeye can hold their attention only for a while.
I could invariably lift my son out of his tantrums by just picking up a bat and giving it to him, while I took the ball to bowl. He never liked to bowl...always bat. It is funny that even at that age he could guess that bowling is a second-rate activity. People love to be remembered as a Don Bradman or Sachin rather than a Hall or Griffith.
This ploy never worked with Ishani...she thinks, rightly, that cricket is a wastage of energy...maybe she would watch the gyrations of the cheerleaders with wonder...I don't know.
The only way to lift her out of her boredom is to always say or do something new.
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The other day, as I lazily dressed up and was going out to replenish my stock of Sprite, I could hear Ishani in the Drawing Room going through one of her tantrums, not allowing her mom and dad and her grannie and granpa (mother's side) to converse or watch TV or discuss the night's menu, by loudly whining and screeching to drown them all.
I said: "Ishani! See how Gorilla walks!"...she never heard of gorillas I am sure.
And I went through my ape-imitation from one end of the hall to the other. Ishani stopped her whining at once, jumped down from the sofa and was all silky laughter. I then asked her to do it herself and she did it better than me...I was later told that she was entertaining them for half an hour, bending, drooping her hands, grinning, sauntering with that famous gait, and thumping her tiny chest and roaring meanwhile...
A trick I learned in the class rooms of IIT KGP...walking like a physics-simian to keep the kids focused and de-bored...and amused if possible.
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