All the Strange and Funny Things that Kids (and Foreigners) Say

[Victoria "Stokastika"]

I decided that I needed to start making a list of quotes from Kids and
Foreigners, because these classes of human beings in society make life
really amusing. They tend to associate things with other things that
you wouldn't ordinarily associate with. (Hyperassociate things that
don't necessarily fit together in reality).

This all started with my best friend Talei, Xiao Yan Yu. What she
would do is accidentally make up a new word, and instead of saying it
was "right or wrong," as what an Education System would do, I was very
open to the "mistake" and treated it as a "natural selection of
ideas." Mistakes in my mind are open and invited. Making and embracing
mistakes is the root to building and growing creativity.

Talei ultimately was a bit frustrated with me because she wanted me to
inform her as to whether she was "right or wrong" rather than stating
"If Talei made up a new word, that means there is a gap in the English
language, and the English language should embrace this new word of
Talei."

The word I remember the most vividly was "Dimalla." Talei and I took a
long hike around the Botanical Gardens, in attempt to get a work out.
Talei explained when she first came to the United States, she had a
difficult conversation with a fellow pier in class at the UC Riverside
extension center stating that she had this "dimalla" that she needed
to deal with. And in the end--after about a half-hour of confusion--
finally the girl she was speaking to realized that Talei meant
"Dilemma" not "Dimalla." Well, I thought. Wow, what an interesting
word. I think I should start using that word. Dimalla.

There is a very intelligent lady by the name of Robin Leigh Anderson,
who invented a word BABAGOI, which means Build a Bridge and Get Over
It. Which is the formula for solving problems. Robin made this term
more so out of sheer brilliance, not by accidental innocence of kids
and foreigners. But nevertheless.

As for kids, I live next to a family consisting of three young boys
(Goleta, CA). Today we had a conversation on how much I wanted to sell
my Subaru Legacy stationwagon to them. The eldest boy didn't want to
buy it. Especially at the "special deal of $1000." He thought I
painted the car from green to beige. The second eldest wanted to buy
it for $100, and the youngest child came over to check out the car,
peeked inside and innocently stated: "One dollar."

So, in an ideal world, I would sell the car for one dollar because I
JUST WANT TO GET RID OF IT. But unfortunately, no. It won't work that
way. But I found this brief encounter with a child's mind and its
uncalibrated sense of value to economic reality of adulthood--not that
even adults are truly "economically calibrated" either--I found the
whole encounter quite "refreshing."

I had another incident where the youngest kid told me the day before
Halloween that I was a "big baby." I could fit in the size of his
palm, but I was also as big as the moon. All at the same time! Talk
about scale.

All the strange things that kids say. They open up the mind of adults
who have fallen into "associative predictability."

It was a very interesting observation that Dr. Julie Standish made
yesterday. In terms of writing journal entries about each guest
speaker, from freshman (fresh out of high school) to senior, she
noticed that freshmen minds were very "linear and compartmentalized,"
largely due to the compartmentalized/fragmented knowledge structures
of high school. English is separate from history is separate from
biology is separate from math is separate from art, etcetera. But the
older the students were, and the more time they spent in college,
their writing transformed from a string of jeopardy fun facts to an
embedded web of associative logic.

As my friend, Yasmin von Dassow mentionted to me, "College doesn't
teach you information. It teaches you how to think." GOOD POINT.
Evolution of integrated reasoning in student writing. Wow.