Out With The Old?

Reading to my son is a chore. For both of us. I don't like when he interrupts to chew on the pages, and he doesn't like sitting still, looking at pictures or hearing my voice. We still do it of course. You have to. It's the law in parenting.

It should be easy, most of the books for pre-readers, as my eight month old son clearly qualifies, are short and have little or no text. As an example, a book we have introduces colors. A page will read "Blue" and there will be a bunch of blue colored objects on the page. But because I already know most of my colors, these books tend to be underwhelming. To keep it interesting, I have started reading more advanced titles. Books like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Velveteen Rabbit have made reading much more enjoyable. Especially since I am reading these books for the first time as an adult.

As I read more and more of these children's stories I get the feeling that authors or adult writers, have no idea what kids like. For instance, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is a classic story about a guy and his outdated machinery who struggle to find a place in a modern society that has no use for them. After Mike and his steam shovel have been shooed away and rejected from numerous construction sites worked by new and improved diesel engined shovels, they visit a pit where they look down over a sea of discarded steam shovels being stripped for parts. In the chilling scene, the two seem to contemplate giving up before eventually turning away, determined to find someone to appreciate them. The story ends happily as the team performs one more job and by a happy mistake end up living out their years in the basement of a building as historical artifacts.

I had to wonder who was benefiting more from this book. Me, the guy who will eventually, much like Mike Mulligan, become pretty useless and will one day hope to spend my last years in the finished basement of my son's house. Or, my son, who when old enough to understand words will be wondering why anyone would give a shit about this guy and his old bucket of bolts. I'm pretty sure it's me. Obviously, when you are young, interests tend to lean toward the future and new technologies. It's not until you are older when you realize this fascination with progress can be working against you.

I wonder if this is the same reason you rarely see anyone but the middle aged or elderly antiquing. These are the people that can appreciate the history and old fashioned bulkiness of bygone items. No, don't throw out that old cast iron skillet. Sure, it may weigh ten pounds and be impossible to clean, but just think of all the meals this pan has helped prepare. That should be worth something.