A Life Lesson at age 3

Sandy Dickson

     There are lessons to be learned in just about everything. Even thinking back to my extremely youthful days, I recall now with a smile, how an early childhood experience parallels a valuable life truth.

     I was sitting at the kitchen table at about age 3. I had to be 3 because I can still see that kitchen in my mind’s eye and that table was in my grandmother’s house where we lived until I was age 4 while Dad  returned from his military service and we got a house of our own.  

     I had dumped the box of crayons out for easy pickin’s. It’s always easier for an artist to work if he can better see the color choices with which he has to work.

     Then I had a thought; more accurately, a 3-year old curiosity. I didn’t really mean any harm, I just wondered if it could be done.   

     A crayon looked about the same size as a nostril. I wondered if it would fit up my nose. That’s all it took. Just a thought and I was on the mission.

     Up, up and yes, it could indeed be done. Okay, now I knew. Now what? Well, I could only breath half as well.

     “Mmmoooooommmm!” When in distress, call Mom. That was a lesson I had already learned early on.

     Mom was already at the kitchen sink anyway, so for her, it was just a matter of turning around and sizing up the situation.  

     She rushed over and I think I remember her asking why I did that. Why does a 3-year old do anything? Idle curiosity, and that seems to be one and the same with logic at that age. I had to see if it was possible and what would happen if it was, just like I did when I poked the opening and closing eyes in on my doll. I was sorry I did it, but I just wanted to see what would happen, and what happened in that case, was irreversible, in that my doll’s eyes never worked again, nor were they visible. They were tucked back into her head somewhere replaced now, with only two eye holes.

     The crayon issue at hand became a tedious endeavor with Mom trying to ease it out very carefully without it breaking off in there. I’m not sure, but there may have been a tweezer involved. At any rate, it was laborious and tense, but she triumphed and I was able, once again, to breathe through both nostrils. What had only taken a few seconds to do, took many more minutes to undo and had to be done very strategically, unlike how I had been able to insert it.

     I never did that again. But thinking back about that, this is the lesson to be learned from such a venture; the same lesson that can be gleaned from so many things we do in life: Things are a lot easier to do than to undo and the undoing usually requires a lot more time and effort.

     Lots of marriages would never take place, large purchases would never be made, contracts never be signed, responsibilities would never be taken on if people would just learn this lesson early on.
     So I guess the bottom line, figuratively speaking, is: we need to really think it through and realize the consequences before we stick  a crayon up our nose.