Traditions and Gorillas

In the mid nineties a friend at RPI told me a story (he said it was an experiment, but I am not sure if it was really done or just a story).. so let's just call it that for now.

It goes like this. The scientists put three gorillas in an enclosure which was moated on three sides and on the fourth side was a tall metal gate which was electrified but not locked.

Initially the first gorilla attempts to open the gate but gets a shock so it comes back to the middle of the enclosure. Same thing happens to the other two gorillas. Soon there is a baby gorilla born in the enclosure. They also add another new gorilla to the mix. When these two new additions tried to go towards the gate, the other three pulled them back with a lot of warning. 

Soon the original three gorillas were long gone and new ones were added to the enclosure. The fence was not electrified anymore, but not a single gorilla made it out. If anyone tried, the others would stop them from the terrible fate about to befall them. 

Now there may be many morals to that story or many inferences from that experiment on behaviour, but my takeway is that sometimes traditions are just formed along these lines and we do things out of context to present day just because our parents and grand parents did so.

Now why bring up all this now? This week has a special day in it.. aka Valentine's day. So "tradition" has it that the kids give a "Valentine" to all their classmates, irrespective of wheather they like the person or not. 

This translates to us buying a bunch of cards, envelopes, pre packaged trinkets and putting them in envelopes and getting them to school. They have nicely segregated the Valentines for boys and girls.. so if there are are 20 kids in the class and you have 12 girls, you have to buy two boxes of 20 valentines. 

To make things interesting, the envelopes and the trinkets don't always fit and we cannot seal the envelopes easily with the heart stickers provided. If there is one item on the shelves this week that has no concept of quality, it must be the valentines.

In spite of all this, the joy on the kids face doing this activity is worth the griping over the quality of these things. I am not sure if we will ever eliminate this "tradition", given that it provides much needed jobs to a bunch of factory workers and also given that it keeps the paper and pulp industry going again.. well, one can always try to find a silver lining in this somewhere ?! 

Every year I suggest skipping this tradition for our kids but don't succeed in it. We also have a shoebox for each kid where all the valentines they received over the years are stored.

The good news? The middle schooler does not have to do this anymore. It seems to be like trick or treating. Once the kid goes to middle school, this is seen as an activity for "small kids" or as Jr. puts it "it is for kids", which is a hint to us that she should now be counted with the adults. 

Happy valentine's day to everyone in advance. May your weekend be filled with cards, candies and flowers and at the least, lots and lots of love!