Kiddin’ Around

So much of what adults do can be regarded as exaggerated versions of children’s behavior.

For all the ways poker resembles or can be regarded as a variation of other “mature” endeavors like, say, a business negotiation, a political conflict, a type of social intercourse, and so on, it also simulates entirely playful diversions such as kids pursue so earnestly. After all, the game does involve a lot of pushing around of cards with different shapes, numbers, and pictures on them, not to mention passing tiddly-winks back and forth according to an agreed upon set of procedures.

Vera was scrolling through the channels on the teevee yesterday and for a while settled on some show involving artists (of a sort) who painted bodies. Like so many shows, this tiny little creative niche had been made into a competition (“reality TV”-style), with judges and votes and so on. The program reminded me of kids’ doodles in the margins of notebooks, just elaborated much more thoroughly and overlayed with a patina of weightiness.

Also enjoyed some of the funny business conducted by several NBA players over Twitter yesterday, the kind-of-hilarious “emoji war” that served as a comical chorus to the whole DeAndre Jordan flip-flop whereby after verbally agreeing to sign with the Dallas Mavericks, he changed his mind (as allowed) and decided to stay on with the Los Angeles Clippers.

I won’t sort through all of the details of that story -- here’s a good recap of it all that also includes several of the tweets players were sending out with emojis as well as photos attached, many of which were very clever and highly amusing.

Couldn’t help grinning both at some of the tweets as well as the whole idea of adults communicating via little pictures in this way, never mind the fact that the context for the whole conversation was a business deal involving more than $85 million.

Was like poker, I guess. And other things adults do that kids do, too. Make pictures. Doodle. Compete. Laugh and play.