A child more stupid than a pig

Jeff Taylor. Fot. Sławomir Ostrowski

Even I’m amazed about how soon I’ve started writing the 22^nd entry of Streffa Jeffa. …..I take that back. The first sengtence was written at the end of July and now it’s a month later. Sorry about that. I’ve been busy doing some cool stuff as well some really stupid stuff e.g. shopping at Ikea, editing reasearch papers about leeches/pijawki, putting up with renovations.

Maybe in the „cool” category, I can place „teaching kids at a language camp for ten days. First the basic details about the eperience and then my conclusions.

Where: educational scout camp near Chojnice and Bory Tucholskie National Park.

How many kids: five

How was it: Pretty easy. Ten days outside of stupid Olsztyn? That’s a vacation for me.

Weather: Partly rainy, mostly rainy and mostly crappy.

Would I do it again? An opportunity to get out of stupid Olsztyn again? Gladly.

Now my conclusions after ten days working with five chidlren, from 8-13yrs old: it sucks to be a child and…children are pretty stupid.

You know how the intelligence of pigs is often compared with that of children? „A grown-up pig is as intelligent as a two-year old child .” Well, it should be, „A grown-pig is as stupid as a two-year old child.” Pigs live up to 10-15 years old. If they lived longer, would they be as stupid as an eight-year old or worse … a teenager?

Children understand the concept of „danger” and realize some things could kill them if not careful. However, these things are not the same which are feared by adults with their more developed brains. Running into traffic? No that’s a game for kids. Pots full of boiling water on the stove/cooker? Nope, you know the saying: curiosity killed the cat and stupid children.

Eating and swallowing is the near-death experience for kids and the big killer are fish bones. At the camp, we were eating fried fish on Friday evening, and the five little campers began talking about typical kid stuff – death by fish bones. „You have to watch out when eating fish. You could swallow a bone and die.„ One little girl, a blonde future drama queen, took those words to heart, and when  a small bone got lodged in her throat, she began to sob, „I’ll go to the hospital and the doctors will have to cut a hole in my throat to get the bone out.”

I wonder if pigs have this problem? While eating on the farm, do they think that they should chew their food more slowly so they won’t choke. In the next Streffa Jeffa entry, I’ll explain why it sucks to a child. Now I’ll tell you you it’s better to be a pig than an undeveloped human. A lot less worries,  becomes something delicious after death and smarter than children.

(łw)