Stuck with a view

About a partly self-made calm after a storm

The first year at school had just passed by. With the fading sound of the school bell, everyone was rushing down the stairs, going different ways, but first taking home their written credentials. Walking as fast as the yet short legs were able to, pausing at each corner before safely crossing a side road, with some leaps of joy and some tentative steps of doubt, everyone came home to share and discuss their wordy one-page assessments with their parents.

Marks were not yet given — only written between the lines. The text, written to an adult audience as to the style, maybe even with an electrical device similar to the one I could already see — and soon even use — at home, with a cathode-ray-tube monitor covered in light grey plastic, humming patiently — that text was quite easy to get for my young brain. So, I didn’t come home completely unprepared.

It correctly told us that I could read from day one, reading any age-appropriate text with understanding and answering the questions posed. My voice was described as shy, sounding as uncertain as I was when it came to something new; I spoke and read very quietly and with little accentuation. During the school year, I had focused mainly on learning the spelling, so that I had acquired an extensive vocabulary with reliable spelling, which I was able to write down very neatly and well structured, so they told us. Furthermore, I was very confident in all known arithmetic operations, even those involving carrying (consider 2+17+6, like 2+7+6 = 5, 1 in mind, that’s 2, yields 25), and managed to do so largely without visual aids.

Much more of my aptitude became obvious at doing things I knew and did by hand, as opposed to sports games — or traversing some yet unknown area on my own, taking steps I hadn’t been told about in full detail first. Not to mention the extremely difficult, momentous, if not downright game-deciding task on my birthday: giving each pupil a small, prepared gift consisting of a lollipop and a square piece of mini chocolate packed in colourful plastic foil (no brands mentioned here), or even putting birthday invitations into a few mailboxes, all this almost without saying a word…

Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash, cropped, example suitcases akin to ours

Call it a school year

Next event on the list: summer holidays. Yay! That meant laying the exercise books down for a while and packing my little suitcase with some T-shirts, coloured pencils and other belongings (an age-appropriate engaging pastime, of course soap, socks etc. were still thought of behind the scenes 🤓). Placing a plushie in the car, along with some cool beverages and snacks, fully crammed, we were ready for a long summer ride to the mountains. Some cardigans on the free backseat next to mine, some short jeans and lightweight shoes on, my father was driving. On the long way, I was occasionally dozing off, but very often I took a look out of the window. Quite soon, I would be able to read the thick road atlas on my own to see where we were going…

When we arrived, we unpacked, to then get down into the restaurant, pleased that we didn’t have to drive three kilometres down the mountain road again. We just stayed right there, had some food and called it a day.

Under weather

In the mountains, the weather can be like a surprise bag — warm and wonderful, occasionally offering some thunderstorms with heavy rain, maybe even some hail, which came rushing down one day — a big and dirty torrent filling up the spaces between the overgrown rocks of the mountains above us, carrying plenty of pebbles and driftwood with it, resulting in a wet landslide which blocked some of the roads.

Even if the weather was not always that bad, we were compelled to stay up there for a couple of days, as the road leading down to the town was blocked, too. Stuck with a view, with nowhere to go, without a chance to even buy a newspaper, which would have left me in cruel silence and boredom… or else…!? Anyway, we were very thankful for the cards and jackstraws we had packed for a few rainy days — and for the cozy restaurant feeding us and the few other guests, no other options being left up there…

Just killing time

It turned out that, although this was a rather new game for me, I quickly understood and really enjoyed playing pick-up sticks, which in Germany is typically denoted as Mikado. The small package is good for travelling. Not knowing the official English word for them, I checked and found that the dict.leo.org entry suggests to say playing chopsticks, while packing jackstraws — why at all isn’t it called “playing jackstraws” then? For sure, we did not need any chopsticks, not even in an Asian restaurant. No wonder that AI was going bananas on trying to get a picture of people playing it, this time… even AI was confused.

If you don’t know jackstraws yet, here is a picture I found on Wikipedia. The game instructions are quite short: Let a bunch of them randomly drop on the table. Then the player whose turn it is attempts to patiently lift one of the sticks, for example with two fingertips, one at each end — without moving any other of the sticks. If you let jitter some of the other sticks even just a bit — you lost and have to pay the bill.
No, just kidding — if this happens, it’s the next player’s turn, of course!

There are a few special sticks which may be used like a tool to lift the requested stick; the precise moves in doing so may somewhat look like sewing or minimally invasive surgery. In the end, you can calculate the points to find out who has won.

Photo: Martin Sommerfeld / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), unchanged, Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spiel_Mikado.jpg

In German, the game is referred to as Mikado.
As none of my subscribers seem to be German civil servants, I suppose I am allowed to tell a bit about the fun we make of them here:

What does Beamtenmikado mean?
[1] jokingly: a game often played among civil servants, where the winner is the one who has managed not to move from their seat at the end of the day

Source: https://www.sprachnudel.de/woerterbuch/Beamtenmikado, translated.

An open ending

So, back to the tourist scene again. I might say, we were stuck out there, waiting for the curvy road to be cleaned. Cars stood still, things hardly moved forward — only up and down some stairs before and after breakfast or lunch, not much more though — so that, to kill the time, we enjoyed playing a game of avoiding moves.

Really? Oh, really.
There weren’t any options, were there?
Well, let’s take a closer look.

From the windows of the comfortable guesthouse, you could look down at the green valley, towards a few small villages and towns, beautifully framed by a row of snowy mountains. Outside, there were a few tables on paved ground under the open sky — shaded by parasols. The building was surrounded by a green garden, the lower side of which was fenced by a wooden railing (or maybe a trellis-work fence) alongside the tables, decorated with a few lamp posts. An open end of the railing stretched out as a bare three-rung fence pointing to where the well-mowed lawn gently sloped up into then sharply descending hills with some green and fruit-bearing trees. I guess that this stunning view had to blow my mind somehow…

On the safe side of the garden, almost huddled against the higher rear side of it, there was also a swing, which could be viewed from the breakfast room — its plastic seat built to resist the weather, its soft, braided cotton ropes allowing free moves to all sides to safely wind down — but which was rarely occupied… so I could have spent some time out there, all alone… well… not all alone. I remember another kid I saw playing there, also a schoolchild in terms of age.

If I remember correctly, my parents even tried to encourage me to play together with him, but I refused to… or if I ever dared to go out, I didn’t say a word as I didn’t know at all how to start a conversation with a stranger… Neither was he… Why should I play for any high stakes of anywhere from being laughed at for a verbal mishap, over being invited for a lemonade at their table, winging it and having fun (of course, optionally returning to the pick-up sticks if bored), coping better at similar conversations next time, let alone such as maybe making a pen friend?

While I was writing this, I could recall the scene in my head, as if I had taken a slightly blurred photo… as some diascope slides may exist, but they are out of reach.

Conclusion

Overthinking can make us procrastinate forever literally — unless we make the small effort to simply get started. Over the years, I have climbed the long way up my own “mountain of overthinking”… Well, a couple of times, I was lazy, “took the wrong bus” or even procrastinated before moving on when I found the momentum — to finally reach a level from which I can gain some insight into the perspectives of others or can ask some ad hoc questions.

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To move through life just quietly
It does not work so easily.
Without some words and without light
Nobody wins the hardest fight.
All alone and without friends…
So I hope my message lands:
It even rhymes, here’s what I found:
Take little risks, but get around.

German original:

Wer unsichtbar durchs Leben schmollt,
Wird oft vom Alltag überrollt.
Ganz ohne Worte, ohne Licht
Schafft man die größten Krisen nicht
So ohne Freunde ganz allein.
Da fällt mir eine Lösung ein!
Also: Übe sich wer kann,
Wo es nichts verhageln kann.