the kids are alright - right?

I don't try and hide the fact that kids aren't really my thing. I have a lot of admiration for people who are good with kids, but personally, I just can't handle it. I treat them as small adults and then they don't behave how I think they should and it just makes me unhappy. I don't know how to communicate with them because they use a special kind of logic (read: lack thereof) and I'm not allowed to be mean to them or I get in trouble. 

Essentially, I don't like anybody I can't treat as an equal. 

I'm also not a big fan of sticky fingers.

Nevertheless, there are, of course, occasions when I maybe think that maybe they maybe aren't so bad. When do these occasions occur? When I have taken a cute picture of a child and I can sit at my computer months later and look at that image with absolutely no risk of having to deal with the alive creature itself. 

Now, for example. I went through almost my entire 'Photos' file (so many gigabytes!!) and plucked out all the "cute kid" ones.  (That term is in inverted commas because I'm still not convinced they aren't hoards of mini-evils.)

So what was the catalyst? Ummmm... I read an article about how mummy-bloggers are the most successful of all the blogging factions and I was like 

"WHAT!??!??? That's ridiculous! Everybody hates children!"

And then I started thinking about how actually, no, not everybody hates children. Lots of people like children. Hell - I think some people even love them. 

I know, I know, I was once a child too. I'd like to think that I was actually a small adult that whole time, you know, having reasonable conversations and being logical and reading good books, doing all this normal adult stuff except in a teeny tiny body.

But I know that is just ridiculous, and that my parents had to put up with all my shit, just like all parents put up with their kids' shit. Literally and metaphorically. And they still love me. It's truly a miraculous thing. 

And I thought. Hey - lets see what all the fuss is about! 

These kids are from five different countries (I don't count Hong Kong as a part of China) and one thing I noticed was that they're the same everywhere. It's like kids have this get-out-of-culture-free card. They wear different clothes, and experience varying degrees of hygiene, but they are at the heart of the 'one world' idea. 

When I look at children when I'm travelling, I understand a little bit more about the continuity of the world. The time passing and the people of the world being so similar. They represent the oldest ideas of humanity. I see some kind of understanding in them, if only because of the simplistic ways they see the world. 

But I still don't really like them. Lol.