Boys are from Mars…Girls are from Venus...a different take...a new perspective...

This has been an age old saying which has withstood the test of times and still holds true. Boys keep saying girls can do this, girls can’t do that and in turn girls keep saying the same to boys. I won’t go into much detail here coz we are all quite familiar with things each of them are good at and things they are not.

I’m here to tell you my own part of the story. This is an incidence which took place recently at my home while I was playing with two kids just about 2 years old and who live in the same apartment building as mine. Well no prizes for guessing one’s a boy (Aryan) and one’s a girl (Samya). So these kids were playing with their toys and I did my part by giving them a few crayons and a pair of rattling magnets.

I first gave the magnets to Samya. She couldn’t understand what to do with it. So I gave one magnet in her hand and took the other one closer so they attract. But quite unexpectedly, she got scared with the rattling sound the magnets made when they stuck and threw the magnet away. I tried once again and after a little coaxing gave her the magnet. Alas, same result, a misguided throw this time missing my face by a millimeter. She just wouldn’t touch the magnet again, as if it was a ball of fire or something. So I gave up and handed her the crayons. She seemed to quite like them and thus began her abstract sketching session (making things that looked like my face, some numbers, and a few freestyle sketches too) which lasted for almost an hour. This girl sure got some creative talent!

But Samya could pick up the crayons only after the mighty Aryan had almost broken half of them into pieces. He thought they were meant to be broken and not make drawings with. So I tried the magnets with him. And guess what, he thought that was the coolest toy he ever had. He left everything else to concentrate on discovering the laws of magnetism. By the time his mom came to drag him back to home, he had already understood how poles attract and repel. He discovered that the magnets could also stick to door and window frames, the fridge and also the fridge’s voltage stabilizer (wow, I never tried that!). He even found some nails, a hammer and a pair of pliers under my bed that he could stick the magnet to. I mean, kids are smart, but this smart, I never knew.

The point is, these kids had not seen these things earlier and they did what their instincts made them do. Nothing that they had seen or been taught. Just plain natural INSTINCT!! It made my belief in that phrase even stronger…it’s in the genes, you just can’t help it!!