WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT, ADULTS KNOW BETTER!

No matter who we are as people and what our experiences are, being a child is a very unique experience. As children we have less responsibilities and expectations placed upon us. Though I wouldn’t go as far as to say that life is easier when we’re very young. Firstly the reason for children having less expectations is because they don’t know quite as much as they will eventually know when they’re grown. This comes from a combination of our development from growth and our experience from time. Regardless of how I’ve developed cognitively, experience has also played a major role in me eventually becoming who I am now.

In life opposites always seem to attract at first glance, so as a child I wanted to be an adult even more so than my desire of returning to childhood today. Things which were so appealing to me about becoming an adult included having more freedom, expectations and just knowing more. Yet I must say the latter was more of a private truth that I somewhat resented whenever I was reminded of it!

An example of that happened one cold winter night when I was six years old and sat at the dinner table. I was staring at my salad and mum said that if I didn’t finish eating soon she wouldn’t take me to the circus that night. All of my preferred food had been eaten, so my old trick of hiding the salad underneath all that was not a possibility. Mum was sat right next to me which meant that I also couldn’t sneak the food into the rubbish bin at the other side of the dining room.

What could I do? I thought and thought as I was messing around playing with the salt and pepper. Again mum said “The circus is going to close soon. If you don’t eat up you can’t go”. Then I asked mum if I could pour salt on my lettuce and she told me “no” because it wouldn’t taste good.

At the time I genuinely thought that my idea to finish my dinner was brilliant and I didn’t believe that mum’s words would end up being right. Mum had told me that there wasn’t much time until the circus closed, and it was essential that I would have to finish my salad quickly. So I dived for the salt while mum wasn’t looking and poured enough salt on my lettuce for it to look “sparkly”. Even as a six year old I knew that mum would soon see the salt on the lettuce because she was sat right next to me. So there was nothing else for it. I quickly picked the lettuce up with my fork and shoved it all into my mouth.

The taste was beyond disgusting. It was even worse than a spoonful of undiluted Vegemite (and the taste of that is revolting enough)! Mum had turned around again and I knew it was crucial for me to swallow the excessively salted lettuce immediately. All the time I attempted to keep a straight face. But while I was trying to gulp it down, I gave a conspicuous shudder when I finally swallowed it all. Luckily mum had mistaken the shudder for me being cold. She went to get my sweater and handed it to me while saying how good it was to do what I was told, and to eat my food properly.

I was proud of myself for managing to finish my dinner. However I kept pushing aside the inner realisation that what I thought was a brilliant idea actually wasn’t. Mum was right and I was wrong. I never wanted to admit that to her. At least when I was still a child.

MANY YEARS PASS...

Eventually I grew into adulthood and for almost two decades I kept the truth from that memory a very tight secret.

Though when I was 22 years old I was asked by a memory researcher (who was studying a very rare kind of memory I have called HSAM, which makes me unable to forget the vast majority of my life) to describe a recollection I had from June 1996.

Mum happened to (again) be right next to me during that moment! I hesitated. Should I finally admit that she was right and I was wrong? Well... sixteen years had passed after all. So finally I decided it was time to tell the truth. The truth not only of my actions but also my feelings of knowing that my idea wasn’t as brilliant as I had mistaken it to be.

Once I began telling the story I (just like my mum) burst out laughing. It was just so hilarious and childish, and at the exact moment when I winced while recalling the horrible taste of salt piled on a piece of lettuce mum said “See, that’s why you should always listen to your mother”. I smiled and said “Yes mum, you’re absolutely right”.