OPENING SALVO // GRASSHOPPERS, CRICKETS, AND OUR CONSCIENCE
Naughty and Nice
On rules, and on breaking them
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
You can imagine the general scene: kids playing, chasing each other around the unremarkable statue of three polar bears huddled together, parents rounding kids up for dinner. As I sat on a park bench, I watched one particular father, also sitting on a bench and staring down on his phone, ignoring the fact that his son was climbing a tree in front of him in a fenced off, landscaped area that was clearly marked with yet another sign as a place kids were to stay out of. Only after a little girl tried to follow suit and step over the fence did the father tell him to get down and get out of there.
What is this little boy learning, I thought? Why the complete flouting of park rules, which are posted everywhere? Why is your son allowed to climb the tree? Who do I call about this violation of the rules?
There is, of course, no one to call about a singular, misbehaving child but the misbehaving parent, who in this case clearly didn’t care. I’m sorry to tell you, but the politically polarizing figure Jordan Peterson1 is right about some things, including at least one of his “rules for life”: Don’t let your kids do things that make you dislike them. Others will dislike them, too, and not being able to form friendships, even as young as four, will have negative consequences for the rest of their lives.
But sometimes we must break the rules. The travelog and social history In the Land of the Grasshopper Song has a title akin to a children’s book. But it’s a rich social story about the enduring relationship of two young adult women from New Jersey who decide, at 16, much to their parents’ chagrin, that they aren’t going to be proper ladies: They are going to share all of their worldly possessions, never marry, and spend the rest of their lives together—which they do. It’s never mentioned in their book that they are romantically involved, but it’s rather hard to imagine that they weren’t. And in any case, their life is one of the record books, love story or not. //
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