Posted originally on Facebook:
For my break from work yesterday I decided to hit up good-ol McDonald's for dinner. Chicken Nuggets and Fillet-O-Fish. I love their Fillet-O-Fish Sammiches. I think this is attributed to the fact that I love seafood in general... (yay Maryland!)
While I was done with most of my food, I saw this little boy (his name was Robbie) running around, making "wssssshhhhhh"ing noises. He probably thought he was some fighter pilot... or a flying Transformer Autobot or something cool like that (speaking of which, why am I even assuming he was flying simply by the sound he was making? That's rather narrow-minded of myself). Like most children, he had no inhibitions. He just did what he wanted to do. I was also happy that his parents weren't overbearing and forced him to sit still and be quiet. But that could also mean that his parents are just super-negligent or something. Nowadays you can't really tell.
All the sudden, the boy had this compulsion (or perhaps intention?) to go to the nearby ATM machine (which was right next to me) and rapidly smack/push/spam/hit all the buttons at once. While doing so he quickly turned to me with a look of what seemed to be either mild embarrassment or approval. He then decided that playing with an ATM machine was no longer fun and continued to fly around McDonald's again as well as climb tables and grab salt shakers.
I wonder what was on his mind. What fantastical creative thought occurred in his mind that required him to need to spam buttons at an ATM machine? One could say that he did it without thinking, and just wanted to do something out of pure curiosity. That could be true. Or maybe he saw something in that ATM machine that nobody else did. Maybe... it was some sort of command center to get his next mission objective (which if true, would have been to grab a salt shaker from a nearby table). Maybe it was a refueling station of some sort (though going to his table to take a bite out of food would make sense to me). Maybe he needed to transmit coordinates for some sort of bombing run, and had to use some sort of console device to do so. Maybe he was pretending to play video games. Maybe his fingers were just in need of some good hitting of buttons.
Of course, if any adult ran up to an ATM to hit 30 buttons or so then run off then they'd be socially viewed as abnormal or crazy.
But why is it seen as crazy? Because it deviates from the standardized norm of what "adult behavior" is? That's the most simple and probable answer which I agree with.
This leads to a sad realization on society. To "properly grow up" means we are forced to throw away modes of creativity. Instead, the world tells us to express creativity by only certain means (which are in no way wrong or inferior) such as art, music, dance, storytelling. But good lord if we just so happen to act on our creative thoughts, we've deviated from the social standard. Thus, we become labeled as a child or mentally retarded or something. The world doesn't let me fly around a McDonald's and pretend an ATM machine is a console to initiate a missile airstrike on a terrorist outpost hidden in structure of the soda fountain stand. Because if I did, people would tell me to "grow up". There are many socially constructed sanctions for doing so.
Yet it's alright to do so in outlets of creativity that are more socially appropriate to what is considered "adult".
"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
-C. S. Lewis
In this world, social maturation is arrested development. An arrested development on creativity. And that is nothing short but a great injustice.
Perhaps true creativity is expressing creativity in a creative manner. Yet it's those people that are ostracized and marginalized. Perhaps that is a greater injustice than inhibiting creative creativity.
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