Today, we were making Taconnet Wreaths, and began a new competition called the Pine Cone Pick-Up. It wasn't too popular, but the kid who won picked up 256 pine cones, which is a record here on the island. After the competition, when we were sitting around cutting cardboard and glueing nature to the wreaths, we started taking about tattoos, and piercings, and smoking. All of us, children and staff alike, were in agreement that smoking is bad and that too many piercings just look terrible, but there was a definite break when it came to tattoos. Personally, I am all for tasteful tattooing. Nothing too big or brash, or that doesn't fit with one's personality. A small, inconspicious tattoo though? That's fine with me. Most of the children, on the other hand, are completely against all tattoos.
Observe:
I was talking to one girl about why she didn't like them, and she mentioned that she "has really good parents who told me that they are bad." (Which is true. She does have great parents, just as I do. And my parents told me the same thing when I was her age. To be fair, they still tell me the same thing.) The girl then went on to say, "Abby, I thought you were a good person!" I asked her if it was possible to be a good person and have tattoos, but I never got a straight answer out of her. One of the boys did assure me, however, that "having a Chinese grandfather is okay though, because that's what it says in the book I'm reading."
Another girl asked me if I had always liked tattoos. I told her, "No, when I was younger, I was scared of people who had them and I thought they were gross, but as I got older, I changed my mind about them." She looked at me in horror, exclaiming, "But I don't want to change my mind! I don't ever want a tattoo! What if I change my mind and then get a tattoo and then change my mind back?" I assured her that if she never wanted to change her mind about this particular subject that she probably wouldn't. Right at that moment, the youngest boy came over and said to me, "I want to get scary bone tattoos ALL OVER MY BODY. You should get a big skull on your arm." He turns to the terrified girl, and in the same way he might chase this girl with a worm, starts chanting, "Tattoos on your face! Tattoos all over your body! Tattoos on you face! All over your face!" The girl pushed him away, still terrified, and even with constant assureance that she wouldn't ever like tattoos, it was still about ten minutes until she didn't look like she was about to run away.
I love the kids here on the island. They are all very sure of themselves and their opinions, and so sometimes I forget that they are still young. It is on days like today, when I get to assure a girl that she won't ever like tattoos, and that I can still be a good person even though I've got a few, that I remember they are still very young. They still need older kids to hang out with, to treat them as equals, to give them a place to wrestle with new ideas with no judgment. A child can be so young, and so old, in the very same moment, and that my friends, is the magic of children.
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