Ethnography of young cousins

By Todd L. Dias

I felt a bit like an anthropologist today when my little cousins Cameron, and Jamie came over for a visit with their parents. What follows is a mock study of cultural differences between a ‘tweener and pre-teeners .

You might say what differences are there worth noting? An obvious one would be the gap in age. I am 28 and Cam is 11 and Jamie is 9. But this difference leads to another related difference. Technically we are of the same generation but in terms of cultural generation (think baby boomers, generation x, etc.) there too is a gap. I need only look at technological advancements to demonstrate. Hardly anyone had a PC when I was their age, let alone internet, email, google, facebook, wikipedia etc. and this is to say nothing of the cultural forces that spurred these things on and the impact these things have had on society.

My feeling, having said that, is that there is an almost timelessness to young kinds in our society. For one thing there is the ingenuity and resourcefulness they have when it comes to entertaining themselves. Where a ‘tweener would just sit in front of a screen of some kind, or go out and drink if one got bored, if you make the slightest suggestion to young kids of a game they like, they will likely find the means to actualize this potential.

For instance there was mention of baseball and all at once there was a scouring of my backyard for a stick large enough to be used as a bat. We found it and a ball and went to the park. Once there they did what kids do far and wide across North America: they established bases with whatever they had at their disposal. Cam’s shirt marked 1^st, a pile of aggregated litter marked 2^nd and Jamie’s shoes marked 3^rd.

One might ask what role did I play participant observer, authority figure, or a combination? Let me explain by stepping back. When I was in my mid-teens during a family get together I told a relative that I felt like I was “between rooms”. By this I meant that metaphorically and sometimes literally, the kids are in one room and adults are in another. I felt like I didn’t belong in either. I still feel this way, though to a lesser degree. As Cam put it, I am a rookie at being an adult. There are still many things I both do not understand and do not want to be a part of. But something came up today that reminded me of my own unique progression.

Cam and Jamie were playing on my instruments which I magnanimously allowed them to play on. Cam sensed that I was uneasy about how he was playing my guitar and asked which instrument I cared more about not getting broken. I replied that the guitar meant more to me. He was surprised. “But it is just an acoustic. Why?”

I paused. I knew my answer wouldn’t satisfy him. “That guitar and I have gone through a lot together” I remained somewhat cryptic in giving answers to the scores of questions that followed. They couldn’t possibly understand that the guitar had saved my life, from the moment I got it in 2000 when I was in the hospital through 8 years of pain and recovery filled with sorrow, grief, fear, worry, joy, excitement, nervousness, boredom, and everything in between. They couldn’t understand because they had only just begun down this road of life. No mere words can convey the experience required to understand what I only inadequately told them.

This taught me something about children, but also of myself. I learned that in some cases there really is an innocence about children. Not in terms of good and evil, but in terms of how they see the world, of inexperience. My cousins did not see the value in my guitar because of a certain kind of innocence. They had never experienced grief of the kind that I and many others who have been around longer have faced. And therefore they could not see my guitar as having anything that would be instrumental (no pun intended) in coping with it. This is not to fault my cousins at all but rather to point out there innocence in every sense of the word. It makes me realize that for some people there really is a time when pain and sorrow does not occupy a large part of one’s life.

This must not be seen as a sweeping generalization (something I abhor) but rather an insight gained through informal observation of 2 children. I learned that in my own way I have gained adulthood as one who has experienced a great many things pertaining to the inner life. If I really found fault with myself for not engaging in a certain kind of what Heidegger calls “idle talk” and understanding myself in terms of the world of objects, then I can say my experience trumps all this. I am in my cousins’ debt for helping me with this insight.