The Unit of Caring

Merlin and I have been playing a game for the last thirty minutes.

The game goes ‘Merlin throws the rubber duck out of the bathtub; I throw the rubber duck back into the bathtub’.

To Merlin this game contains astonishing variety. Sometimes the duck lands near him; sometimes it lands all the way across the bathtub. Sometimes he licks the duck; sometimes he doesn’t bother. Sometimes he has an immediate successful return; sometimes he has a hard time picking up the duck or gets distracted by the shower curtain. Sometimes he giggles and sometimes he looks very serious and determined. Every once in a while I really mix it up and set the duck on the ledge; he takes a while to find it but is very pleased once he does.

I read a post awhile ago I really enjoyed, that argued that the reason we enjoy different media at different ages is that interesting things are things that are the right amount of surprising and comprehensible. Something that’s too incomprehensible is boring; a crime drama in a language I don’t speak with four hundred characters I can’t keep track of us is uninteresting, not because there’s nothing to it but because I can’t understand enough to form expectations which could subsequently be fulfilled or subverted. A rerun of a mediocre episode I’ve watched a hundred times isn’t surprising, because my expectations will never be subverted. Interesting things are in the sweet spot where they make enough sense you can form expectations and not so much sense that your expectations are wholly sufficient and the follow-through completely predictable.

And to a baby, the most delightful game in the world is ‘throw the duck out of the bathtub; throw the duck back into the bathtub’, because he can form expectations and have them fulfilled or surprised, over and over, with variations that seem trivial to me but delightful to him. The duck is upside down! That’s the right level of subversion of expectations. The duck is behind the curtain! That’s the right level of subversion of expectations. I have a mental catalogue of all the things that can happen when you throw a duck into a bathtub, and all of them are comprehensible and none of them are surprising. But to Merlin, every duck throw is a glimpse at that fascinating space where things make precisely enough sense that you can be astonished at them.

• 19 August 2017
• #personal
• 377