The Tutoring Floor

Today I took Gege to the mall, and we came to a floor packed with all kinds of classes: drawing, crafts, and more. To adults, the purpose of this floor is perfectly clear: learning things, taking lessons, building skills. I call it the tutoring floor.

But Gege had a wonderful time wandering here, finishing one shop and drifting to the next. One window was filled with little scenes in rows of compartments, populated with all sorts of characters and decorated with candy and rainbows around them. He leaned forward slightly to get a closer look. I stood behind him and took a photo of his back.

Passing the drawing studio, he said he wanted to come here to learn to draw. I realized that although we were on the same floor, we were not really seeing the same things.

Adults see one training center after another and think about what it teaches, what age it suits, how to fit it into the schedule, and how much it costs. What Gege sees first is a picture, a little figure, something he would like to make with his own hands too.

In the way adults understand things, you usually decide what to learn first and then find a place to sign up. With a child, very often it goes the other way: you stop to look, find it interesting, and then want to go in and give it a try.

Of course, his saying today that he wants to learn to draw does not necessarily mean he will always love it. He might like it even more once he tries it, or he might turn around and be drawn to something else. But this "I want to come here," right now, already deserves to be listened to seriously.

When I photographed the advertisements outside the shops today, I also took in the interiors. That is a recent change in how I take pictures. Over the past two years I, too, have been looking, feeling, and trying things like a child. Doing crafts at Harbor Land today, I mixed the colour of an ice-cream cone in no time, a new skill I would not have dared to imagine before.

Leo's Notebook