NO FIXING: An essay that will get my mother off my back
This is a testimony of the an unfixed person. After writing it, my husband got into some pretty heavy arguments with me about it, so I must clause. Fixing has nothing to do with adults. You can walk around all day trying to fix other adults and it is their perogitive to tell you to screw off or not. NO FIXING is commentary soley about parents, teachers and other athority figures who compulsively attempt to fix children.

Lesson One:

Butterfly Land: Didn't your mother ever tell you holding onto butterfly wings killed them?

Not that anyone would doubt it, but when I was a kid I was one of those weird ones. Not just normal coloring outside the lines weird, either. No, I was that weird kid who adults cocked their heads at with an expression that made me think they only spoke Marsian or something. Which is probably what they thought I spoke. What can I say. I was a free spirit. Even at that age people were trying to explain to the normals, "That's Morgan, she's our little artist." Though the freaking normals were probably thinking I was bound for acadamia on the short bus.

I think Ma still has the oldest piece of ceramic art I ever made, which happens to be an aesthetic piece I brilliantly entitled "Butterfly Land," in which I portrayed a river flowing over a palm tree.

I think it will do to start our talk about fixing in Butterfly Land. It has a very specific flow though (much like the Butterfly Land River) so i will do my best not to lose anyone.

I will start with the fact that no one, no one at all-save my parents-liked my Butterfly Land Masterpiece. Everyone else looked at it and then looked at me and then looked at it and said, "What is that blue thing?" And I said, "The river. Butterfly Land is an island. the butterflies can't drink ocean water." Which, you know what, THAT MAKES SENSE in my opinion. Only all I got back for it was "It is going over...a palm tree?" See, now who are they to think that in Butterfly Land rivers can't go over palm trees? Do they know? Have they ever been there? No. So how come I had to take so much crap about it when I was FIVE? How come I had to listen to people telling me that if I wanted to make a bridge it could have been done THIS way and if I wanted to show a river I could do it THAT way and if I wanted to make a palm tree I shouldn't have madde it larger than the tower where all the butterflies lived.

Um, excuse me? Aren't butterflies small? why would they need a tower bigger than a palm tree? Duh.

Anyhow, when I took Butterfly Land, along with my deflated ego home (because I had thought it was perfect before everyone started telling me what I could have done better on it) Mom looked at it and said, "Is that blue thing...a river?"

Which is why I remain unscathed by the fixers of the world who tried to crush my artistic spirit when I was five. Because my mother knew that in Butterfly Land, rivers can most definitely flow over palm trees.


Lesson Two:

Nemember When: Why fixing hurts you.

Do we all Nemember this story? OK, recap, Weird Kid with a big mouth=Me, and until I was seven, "Nemember" was a core word in my vocab. It was the catalyst word to me telling one of my signature stories. When then might have been "Nemember when we were in butterfly land last week?" just as easily as they might have been "Nemember when we went to the store and I stubbed my toe?"

But! Eager to nemind (another core vocab word circa 1985) people of what had and had not happened in the past, I was also really conscious of being corrected all the time. Because, well, I was. I was corrected mercilessly at school by other kids and their parents and teachers who did not know me better just to let me do my own thing. Because they wanted to help. Only it wasn't help. It was fixing.

Help is asked for. Guidance is needed. Fixing is unnecessary, neurotic and it breeds neurotic people. Know any seriously neurotic people? Like the ones who are so neurotic about getting something wrong they end up having no personality? Yeah, those people's parents? FIXERS.

If a four year old Morgan went up to an adult and said, "Nemember...nemember when..." and they cut her off and said, "RE-member,"

She would say, "Nemember what?"

And so that person would look down at her and say again, "RE-MEMBER."

And she would say, "Nemember what?"

And after that if they told her she mispronouncing something instead of just dropping it and getting on with life, she would simply make a note never to talk to that person again ever.

Because, really, that is very embarrassing to be corrected and not very nice to do to a child when in the long run, I totally figured out that N/R issue on my own without the help of a speach coach or shock therapy, thank you very much. And if they could just have gotten over their own superiority issues long enough to shut up and let a short kid talk, they could have found out that I knew at the age of four if you looked up hard enough you could see China. I might have even told them how to. But no, not them, because they were fixers who just HAD to correct me before I even began my story.

Their loss.

Are we getting now that fixing is a compulsion? You have friends who are fixers I am sure. Ones that feel the need to tell you EVERY SINGLE STUPID THING YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE AROUND YOU DOES WRONG. You know how you want to gag them and smack them in the face repeatedly with a wooden spatula? And how part of you really just plain hates that person, but part of you feels the need to do this out of self defense because they make you completely insecure? Yeah, kids totally feel that way when they get compulsively fixed too.


Lesson Three:

Growing a backbone: Why your kid being sent to the principles office for mouthing off is not always a bad thing.

So by ten I was much more secure about my artwork, despite those who tried to kill off my dream of a island made for butterflies. This was all my family's doing, because the rest of the world only saw weird. They didn't see art or unique story telling abilities because they couldn't see past the unexplainable phenomenon of river's on palm trees and grammatical errors. My family didn't give a crap about that. So I had a confidence.

A confidence that was backed up by my father's long-winded lectures about artistic integrity, and my mother's commitment to not fixing. Did this mean that some days I went to school with the left side of my hair in a pigtail and the right in a braid? Yes. But it was the eighties, you were supposed to experiment with your hair, right?

Anyhow, I was ten and thought of myself as an artist. We had this cartoonist that would come to our school all the time then and give us stupid projects for an afternoon, instucting us in the ways of art. Or, you know, that was the idea. And I really liked her for a long time. But she had to go and be a fixer.

Not a teacher. Teachers teach. Teachers correct, yes, but that is a whole differnt thing. You get a math problem wrong and the teacher isn't supposed to do thing for you. THey are supposed to show you how to do it the right way. But where art is concerned, unless you are in a class set up specifically for learning the craft of whatever art you do, there is no right way. But fixers don't get this.

So there I was, in fifth grade and done with my colored pencil drawing and taking it up to this artist/fixer to get her approval. And she, knowing I was very dedicated to creating masterpieces, felt I was not living up to my potential. So she took that colored pencil drawing and she fixed it.

Honest to God, this artist took another artist's work and without permission drew on it. IN PEN. It was hopelessly RUINED.

I asked her to stop, but her little fixing fingers just couldn't help themselves. It was like her compulsive need to fix overpowered her brain funtions and made her blind to the fact that she had just doodled all over my finished drawing. Horifying.

I instinctively snatched my drawing back, hoping to protect some part of it. To which she looked at me mortified and said, "That was rude," and snatched it back, dead set on finishing the destruction she had started.

So, really, she left me with no choice. I re-seized my drawing and said very plainly, "No. You're rude." And I tore it into bits.

I swear you'd think I'd slapped her. "What did you do that for?" she gasped.

I said, "Because you ruined it."

And then I was in the office, surrounded by the vice principal, my fifth grade teacher, and the fixer, all telling me I was going to be in deep trouble if I didn't apologize for calling the fixer rude and tearing up my paper when she was trying to "help" me.

Yeah, me, say sorry for tearing up my own damn art and calling a rude person exactly what they were. Screw that.

They thought they had me. I mean, I wasn't a go to the principal's off sort of kid, so it was with a look of triumph when I was informed they would have to call my parents. That kind of scared me. Because while I knew Ma would understand why I felt compelled to call a teacher rude when they plainly were, she probably would have told me it wasn't exactly very nice of me either.

Though to that, perhaps I'll let Ma decide what she would have done if they had ever gotten her on the phone. Because they didn't. So they called Dad at work.

And they made me tell him over the phone, while they bored their eyes into mine daring me to falsify events or make a plea with him, everything that has gone down. Which I did, truthfully.

Dad was a little confused. After all, when I finished the vice principal got on the phone and told him everything all over again and mentioned possible suspension because I wouldn't apologize. And I just don't think it was quite sinking into Dad's head WHY I should apologize when he couldn't figure WHAT I had done wrong.

I like to add sometimes when I tell this story that Dad had laughed at the principal, because that's what I could imagine him doing. He was never too hot on authority figures. But I'll never know if he laughed at her. I just know he hung up on her. And I know I never freaking apologized.

I also know that this one and only time I landed in the principal's office got me into college. Because telling the tale and talking about artistic integrity is exactly what I wrote my entrance essay on.

Thus, children who remain unfixed will get into college and earn art degrees.

Even IF they put rivers on palm trees, can't pronounce their "r," think you can find China in the sky, didn't color in the lines once and wore one braid and one pigtail.

So you can stop being neurotic now.

Lesson Four:

Teaching: Let's keep our hands to ourselves, adults.

It may not seem like it, but to fix is to fuck with another's art, creativity, inspiration, direction, etc. Yes, I've had college professors who took a piece of charcoal to my drawing or affixed a handle to my mug to show me how. But first off, they ASKED if they could. And second, I had already undergone a childhood that made me secure in understanding the difference between being fixed and being taught, and that just because I was not perfect at something, did not mean I was crap at it either.

And no, I don't qualify asking a child if you can "help them" or "show them" as teaching. Because when an adult asks that to a kid, it is not easy for the kid to say no. It's a power struggle situation. It is also really, really insecure, people. Just think about it. The kid is AMUSING THEMSELF and does not need help. THAT MEANS YOU HAVE TIME TO DO SOMETHING ELSE.

GO! DO IT! Make that cup of coffee you've been meaning to for the last three hours! Read an article from People! Call a friend and have a real live adult conversation! Worry about you for five freaking minutes!

Because you need to ask yourself every time you are compelled to fix, WHY AM I FIXING? Is making what they do "better" going to seem better in their eyes, or yours? And won't you love their masterpiece more if it is a true original? Won't they be prouder of something they were able to accoplish on their own? Is the goal to help make them an independant person, or help make them one of those people who needs constant vigilant eyeing over their shoulder to accomplish anything?

Hands on is a good thing, but so is hands off. Trial and error, even failure, is priceless.

If they want help they’ll ask for it. Then it’s up to you to decide if they really need the help or if they are just quitting because it is too hard. That’s the last and maybe most important part, knowing when to let them struggle. That is what makes us teachers and not fixers.

The no fixing rule, though I focused on art, is applicable to almost anything a kid does that requires inspiration. Fixing is nothing but setting limitations on them. You know how sometimes when you start playing with kids they all of a sudden don't want to play anymore? Yes, sometimes that is because you are old, and old is not cool. But most of the time it is because unknowingly we bring our own rules and expectations to the game. And then it stops being fun. Because before the game was theirs. Now it's yours and you have rules and there are enough of your boring rules in their lives already. That is what fixing does, it creates yet another set of boundaries, only instead of the boundaries making the kid safe or healthy or not a hellion, they only stifle. I have never in my life met anyone who's parents were fixers become a creativly mature individual, and most are incredibly dependant and insecure.

Fixing is saying "Don't play in the whole playground, just walk around on this path that's been carved. I know it looks like fun out there, but exploring is bad because you might scrape your knee or you might not find anything or you might just learn something I don't already know."

-Morgan McBride Hirst

So there it is Mama, I have finally put it in writing. You peddle it where you will.