Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Scrambled Brains


One of my friends made an interesting comment.

And I've been thinking about it.

We were playing a game...not sure of the name...where we teamed up and tried to think like our partner. We were given a word and we each had 30 something picture cards in our hands. Our goal was to lay down five cards that best fit that word, and our partner was to do the same.

Points are given based on the direct matches...i.e. first placed card is the best card to describe the word down to the final placed card which is the least of the top five pictures/statements that describes the word. Points were given for indirect matches, too. When I placed a picture of clowns at number four and she considered it number one we still got points.

After six or so hands when we saw how little we matched, she made her comment. "Isn't it weird? Every time I lay down my cards I just know this is the best way, the only way to lay them down. And I guess the rest of you must feel exactly the same."

Isn't that true? I tend to think of people falling into five or six major/common categories. You've got your birth order, you've got temperaments, you've got personality types. You've got generation. You've got the five blind men and the elephant.

My mom told me she read a fascinating fact. That neural pathways are different in every person's brain. Like a fingerprint, each of us has a unique processing plant within our head.

Hmmm. Like a child who points at a bird and says "aiipane!" because he knows that the speck in the sky is an airplane because someone told him so. Then the bird that flies must be one, too. But when an adult points out that this flying thing is different, it's a bird, a new neural pathway is created, and the child has more information to work with.

This makes my brain hurt. That means that all of my nature and nurture has merged into one big batch of ingredients that go into making me, me and you, you.


And that explains why human beings have such a difficult time getting along with each other.


I don't know that I can even begin to wrap my gray matter around the people like my brother who thought it hilarious to teach my children incorrect words for things. This would be the nurture that has made them all a little twisted just like me.