Over the past
couple of weeks I’ve been taking some time off and enjoying a family holiday in
beautiful Spain. It struck me while enjoying a glass or three of Sangria in the
local village on a busy market day that I had forgotten the simple pleasure of
people watching.
A variety of
colourful characters passed my table that sunny July afternoon and it got me
thinking about how we (or is it just me) make judgments simply based on what
people look like, how they walk, and their general demeanour. I spent a lovely
time that afternoon making up stories about where everyone was going, what
their life was like and why exactly they were walking past my table.
A young boy of
about the same age as my son (13) was selling purses made from recycled Juice
cartons. I’d passed him earlier standing in the Market with a tray of them. I’d
immediately made a variety of assumptions about him. Maybe he was a local boy
trying to make some money to supplement a low family income or he was from the
local hippie commune (yes there was actually one camped nearby)!
I met him again
at that street café where he was going from table to table with his tray,
speaking perfect Spanish. He came to our table and I said a polite No thank
you. He grinned broadly with a wonderful warm smile and started speaking
perfect English in a lovely WELSH accent!
It transpired that
he came to this same place on holiday each year and making recycled purses was
his own personal enterprise to earn extra holiday money. He automatically, as
children do, struck up a conversion with my son as if they’d known each other
forever and started to swap thoughts on the latest iPhone apps.
His mother came
by and we learned that he had quite a nice manufacturing process operating in
the evening. He would spend some time sourcing his raw materials aka juice
cartons, wash them, leave them to dry, make the purses and pass them onto Mum
to cut the closure. His Mum told me quietly that her job was quality control –
she insisted on cutting the closures not because of health and safety but so
that she could give them a check and discard any she thought where below
standard.
This lad was
selling purses at €1 each and told me that already that morning he’d sold 15!
As he left I knew that this boy would go far in life and that maybe in another few
years I’d see him as a Dragon on that TV show!
I later
reflected on these events and a few things struck me:
How many other
miss judgments had I been guilty of that day, this year, in my life?
When exactly
does that ability for open, non-judgmental and easy friendship between children
get flipped into the adult reticence and need to adhere to social norms of behaviour?
Is there some
entrepreneurial gene or is it a leaned behaviour?
Aren’t Mums
wonderful – She quietly kept an eye on quality, played her part in encouraging
him from the side-lines and shadowed him while he sold his wares so that she
knew he was safe.
And finally why wasn’t
my son making recycled purses?
To this there is
no answer other than the million judgments I'm now making about my own ability
to be a great MUM!
Ho hum – I'm off
the check out you tube to see if I can learn how to make them!
No comments:
Post a Comment