Left and Right

We didn't have a television when I was a kid. I was five or six by the time one arrived. Then, when we one did arrive (a gift from my Mother's Father), we weren't allowed to watch it. Well, we could, but not for longer than an hour a day as far as the written rule went, but according to the implied rule (there were lots of these in our house) - it was off limits. This worked out fine because it was a tiny 8-inch screen. Certainly nothing that you could watch for very long without your eyes starting to hurt. Besides, mine (eyes) didn't work anyway.

In an ever disappointing attempt to please our parents, we did other stuff. We kept ourselves occupied with bike explorations, outdoor adventures and make-believe. I remember a lot of coloring. My sister didn't have any patience for that. She was happier using the rock polishing kit that she had received for Christmas or the microscope that came in her Junior Scientist Set. Me? I was all over my Easy-Bake Oven! She made dioramas of dead beetles labeled like fortune cookies and anchored with straight pins. I was more concerned with the fact that the Easy-Bake was flawed - it didn't heat evenly. Who's idea was this and how in the world were cupcakes supposed to turn out well with this type of faulty equipment? My tea-party would be ruined! Even as a child she was definitely a left-brain kind of girl. I watched in awe from my little right-brain perspective.

We might make mud pies in the back yard and fill them with different components to see what happened - a happy mix of quantitative and qualitative data - something for each of us. The most disgusting was a rotten apple and sawdust pie with worms. I can't help believing it would be worth forgetting that particular experiment.

My sister used her brains when she played. I used my hands. Not much has changed. While she was polishing rocks, I sat beside her busily making jewelry out of them. While she gave shots, I was drawing the instruments on the charts in prettier colors. While she studied in her room, I re-decorated mine.

Our perspectives have always been entirely different and yet unopposed. I will always be thankful to her for being there to read me the information from the pages in the instruction manual that is my life while I am too preoccupied with the beauty of the paper it's written on and why the publisher chose such an awful color ink.