It’s fun to be bad at stuff.
Childhood was exciting and fun and you had no responsibilities. You explored ideas, had a bazillion hobbies, everything was new. It was also getting things wrong, feeling confused, stuff seeming impossible, endless spelling tests, and reading Biff and Chip and the Magic Key too many times.
All the same, through grown-up eyes we reckon kids get all the fun.
I think this might be something to do with the fact that we all, at some point, reach an age where we feel too old to learn to rollerblade. Here are some possible explanations for this:
- We love the idea of new things, but actually new things are quite scary.
- It’s embarrassing when we can’t do things, and it’s harder to hide being bad at rollerblading when you’re wearing rollerblades.
- You’ve fallen over enough times to know that you don’t enjoy it.
I can’t rollerblade, but I wanted rollerblades for my 26th birthday. I dismissed the idea but told a friend about it in passing. That friend said ‘You should just get rollerblades’.
What liberation! Sure I didn’t know how to stop on rollerblades, or how to anything on rollerblades really, but who’s to judge what I can and can’t do? Well… actually anyone can judge, but who’s to say that I should care?
Where did all these inhibitions come from?
When we say ‘kids get all the fun’, maybe we’re thinking of the inhibitions we’ve accrued over the years. The ones we didn’t have when we were younger, but now they make it really difficult to enjoy learning new stuff, making mistakes and being silly. Unless, of course, you’ve had a few bevvies. But learning to rollerblade when inebriated is probably quite difficult. Surely we can learn to lose our inhibitions without the help of a beer or five too?
I got rollerblades for my 26th birthday and have become that lady who skates painfully slowly up and down the work carpark. I’m still bad at rollerblading and everyone can see it, but it’s fun to be bad at things. There’s no pressure to perform, no expectations, the only way is up.
So I guess what I’m saying is that we should get rollerblades for Christmas.
Failing that, at least do the rollerblading equivalent – the thing you’re bad at because you haven’t learned to do it yet. Embrace being bad at something, as well as the possibilities it presents!
– Hati
Bonus: you get the fun and exciting bits of being a kid without the mandatory spelling tests. You still have to pay bills though (sorry can’t help you there).
Hati Whiteley 