Tigers make lots of different noises. They growl, snarl, roar, whoof, meow, chuff and, apparently, pook.
I read an essay about a hypothetical village where they still taught the children the important task of the tiger hunt, once a very real threat to the village, long after the tiger had gone extinct. This example was then compared to our school system which the author argued keeps teaching students to kill the extinct tiger rather than preparing them for the modern day. Something about summer gets people talking about the way things were, and I think about those tigers. This week it was about how kids don't learn cursive anymore in school. People get quite excited about this lost skill as they click away on their keyboards and one finger text on their smart phones. In a most recent conversation I asked a passionate grandmother why children needed to know cursive. Her answer? "To read the Constitution when they see it in a museum." And then it seemed a little less important. After that conversation eventually wandered into the now unthinkable rites of summer. Riding a bike without a helmet, putting down the seats in the back of the station wagon and riding in the backety-back along the highway, playing stick ball in the street (Well, I actually have never played stick ball). These are the tiger hunt techniques that we have decided are too dangerous to pass on. My tiger of days past came most recently in the form of a watermelon. My daughter was not impressed when I spoke wistfully of watermelon seed fights and wanted to demonstrate when our seedless watermelon showed up with seeds. I, in turn, was saddened that she could not appreciate her loss. More than ever, I understood the village's need to continue its outdated rite of passage even if the essay was trying to make the opposite argument. It is time to take back the summer, find some real watermelon, and reclaim this lost art of spitting seeds at each other out on a lawn. Chuff, chuff, pook. It is time to go on a tiger hunt.
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