Hi! Just A Genuine Question, I Was Curious As To Why You Dislike The Rainbow Fish?

Hi! Just a genuine question, I was curious as to why you dislike the Rainbow Fish?

Because Rainbow Fish can be retold like this: 

A fish has a part of their body - their physical, incarnate body, what they were born with - that makes them very happy and that they are very proud of. They also have an unfortunate habit of thinking that they are better than other fish. That part isn’t good, and causes the other fish to be unhappy with them and avoid them. 

The fish is now very sad. The only person who likes the fish anymore tells him to go to the octopus, the animal framed as the adult in the story. 

The octopus tells the rainbow fish that they have been a snotty jerk and that the only way to make people like them again is to take off their scales and give them away. That in order to have any friends and make up for their behaviour, they have to rip off pieces of their own body and self and give them away to other people to make the other people happy and make up for their transgressions. 

And the rainbow fish is upset. And then another fish comes and asks them for a scale. And the rainbow fish takes off a piece of themself, their body, the thing they were born into, and gives it away. And now that fish likes him, and is materially benefitted by this piece of another fish’s actual body that has been given to it. 

And then the other fish come, and the rainbow fish rips off more parts of its body - all of the parts that used to make it happy and that it was proud of - and gives them to the other fish, because it’s not fair that the rainbow fish’s body was so much nicer. And when the rainbow fish has ripped all but one scale off, tearing out of themself all but one of the things that they possessed in their self that made them happy, then all the fish are friends with them! And everything is great! And everyone has a fair share. 

Of the rainbow fish’s, and I do quite mean to keep hammering this point, own body.

What the book says is: 

1. if you are born with something nice - like, for instance, an attractive body or a clever mind or a talent or whatever - and it makes you happy and proud, you are a horrible person and deserve to be shunned. Absolutely no line is ever drawn between Rainbow Fish’s self, their actual own body, and their behaviour. In reality, it’s their behaviour that’s the problem: they are mean and aloof to the other fish. This could be the case whether or not their body was all covered with magnificent scales. However, the book absolutely conflates the two: their behaviour is framed as a natural and unavoidable outcome of being happy about and proud of their special, beautiful body. So don’t you dare ever be happy or proud of anything you have or can do that everyone else doesn’t have exactly the same amount as, because if you do, you are horrible and by definition snotty, stuck up and mean. 

2. That in order to make up for the transgression of having something about your actual self that makes you happy and proud (which, remember, has automatically made you selfish and snobby, because that’s what happens), you must rip pieces of what makes you happy out of yourself and give them to other people for the asking, and you must never ever EVER have more of that part of - again, I hate to belabour except I don’t - your self than other people have, and that makes you a good person that people like and who deserves friends. 

To summarize, then: to be a good person you must never have something about yourself that makes you happy and proud and if you happen to be born with that something you must absolutely find a way to give it away to other people and remove it from yourself, right up to tearing off pieces of your body, in order to be a good person who deserves friends. 

This, I am absolutely sure, is not what the author intended: the author definitely meant it to be a story about sharing versus not sharing. But the author then used, as their allegory/metaphor, the fish’s own actual body. Their self. It was not about sharing shiny rocks that the rainbow fish had gathered up for himself. It wasn’t even about the fish teaching other fish how to do something, or where to find something. 

The metaphor/allegory used is the fish’s literal. body. And so the message is: other people have rights to you. Other people have the right to demand you, yourself, your body, pieces of you, in a way that makes absolutely sure that you have no more of anything about your body and self that is considered “good” than they do. 

And that might just suck a little bit except, hah, so: Gifted adult, here. Identified as a Gifted child. 

This is what Gifted children are told, constantly. All the fucking time. 

(Okay, I overstate. I am sure - at least I fucking HOPE - that particularly by this time there are Gifted children coming to adulthood who did not run into this pathology over and over and over and over again. I haven’t met any of them, though, and I have met a lot of Gifted adults who were identified as Gifted as children.) 

Instead of being told what’s actually a problem with our behaviour (that we’re being mean, or controlling, or putting other people down), or - heavens forfend - the other children being told that us being better at something doesn’t actually mean moral superiority and is totally okay and not something we should be attacked for, we are told: they’re jealous of you. That’s the problem. 

Instead of being taught any way to be happy about our accomplishments and talents that does not also stop the talents and accomplishments of other children - whatever those are! - from being celebrated, we are left with two choices: to be pleased with what we can do, or what we are, or to never, ever make anyone feel bad by being able to do things they can’t. And the first option also comes with two options: either you really ARE superior to them because you have skills, abilities and talents they don’t (or are prettier), or you are a HORRIBLE stuck up monster for feeling that way. 

(It is not uncommon for Gifted kids to chose either side, which means it’s not uncommon for them to choose “okay fine I really AM better than you”; this can often be summarized as “intent on sticking their noses in the air because everyone else is intent on rubbing them in the dirt”; on the other hand I have met a lot of Gifted women, particularly*, who cannot actually contemplate the idea of being Gifted because to do so is to immediately imply that they are somehow of more moral or human worth than someone else and this means they are HORRIBLE HORRIBLE SELFISH PEOPLE, and so will find literally any reason at all that their accomplishments are not accomplishments or that they don’t deserve anything for them.) 

Instead of being given any kind of autonomy or ownership of ourselves, we are loaded down by other people’s expectations: we are told that because we can accomplish more we must, and that daring not to do what other people want to the extent that they want with what we are capable of we are selfish, slackers, lazy, whatever. We are taught that we owe other people - our parents, our friends, even The World - excellence, the very best we can possibly do, and trust me when I say people are ALWAYS insisting We Could Do Better. And we should, or else we will be disappointing them, or letting them down, because (because we are Gifted) the only reason we could possibly be failing is not trying hard enough. 

We are, in fact, told over and over and over and over again, to rip off pieces of ourselves to give to other people to make them happy, because those pieces are valuable, but forbidden from enjoying the value of those pieces - pieces of our selves - for our own sake because that would be selfish and arrogant. And we owe this, because we were born a particular way. 

Because, metaphorically, we were born with rainbow scales, so now we have to rip off those rainbow scales in the name of Sharing, and otherwise we are selfish and horrible and deserve to be alone.** 

That is why I fucking hate The Rainbow Fish. 

Because whatever the author INTENDED, the metaphor they chose, the allegory they picked, means that THAT is the story they actually told. (And is the story that child after child after child after child I have encountered actually takes from it.) I don’t hate the author; I’m not even mad at them. But I do hate the book with a fiery passion, and it is among the books I will literally rip apart rather than allow in my house when I have kids, because I’m not going to give it to anyone ELSE’s kid either. 

*but, I would like to note, not UNIQUELY: this is something I encounter in Gifted men as well. 

**I can’t remember who it was, in relation to this, put forward the thought: if people actually talked about the access and use of children’s bodies the way we talk about access to and use of Gifted children’s minds and talents†, the abusiveness would be absolutely clear? But they’re right. 

†because sometimes it is Gifted children’s bodies in an abstract way, in that its their talent for gymnastics or their talent for ballet or sport or whatever, so I mean in a very raw way, the actual physical embodied flesh we are. 

Head’s up that you don’t necessarily have to go through the earlier numbers before you arrive at that higher number. The way it’s written, number 5 in particular, it sounds like it’s a progression, getting worse. That’s not always how it works.

I was reading through these and not seeing myself in numbers 4, 5, 6. But boy is #7 recognizable. So if you’re thinking you’re not doing so great, but you you can’t remember when your mental health was just starting to impact your everyday life, keep reading. Still valid.

A simple mental health pain scale.

Oh wow!

Anybody know if there is a link between ADHD and absolute pitch? I know there’s lots of sensory processing stuff. I thought I’d seen a reference to autism and absolute pitch once in an article, but I’ve lost that.

was trying to sleep but then my third eye snapped open involuntarily so I had to make this

“Killed 99 bears”

a fact that if actually accomplished, should be put on a tombstone.

I mean, I get it that some of his stuff is problematic, but in which of these characters exactly do you recognize Buffy?

Women: “Hey, can we hire fewer blatant misogynists to direct and create media? We’d support that.”

Nerdy Male Director: “Well-spoken. Have you considered hiring me, a man who is afraid of women?”

Oh my God, why have I never connected the Industrial Revolution’s terrible impact on farmers to settler colonialism?? Must investigate further, but seems fittingly full-circle...

As my Rainbow Fish post pushes towards 16K notes, the thing that always breaks my heart is the tag-cloud stories and sometimes replies. 

Some of them are clearly from childhoods that would have been abusive no matter what - the person’s giftedness happened to be one of the tools, one of the things about them that abusive parents or teachers or peers turned into a club to hit them with - and those are fucking tragic and I’m so sorry. And it’s not your fault: when all a parent can say they like about you is “you had so much potential” it is not your fault, that is them being horrible. Every fucking child is lovable, likeable. For a parent to say that says there’s something wrong with them, not you. 

And then the other ones that break my heart so bad are the ones where … the parent meant well. Or the teacher. Or whoever. Or where it was kids being horrible little shits but the actual problem was (and always is) the adults who didn’t intervene because seven year olds are always little shits, they’re seven, they literally did not come with kind generous ethical behaviour installed. We have to teach them that. We have to teach them what’s good and what’s bad and that means you don’t sit there and enable them harassing their classmate because a) it is hideously horrible for the poor target and you have a responsibility to protect them but also b) you are doing the bully NO DAMN FAVOURS. 

But also: do not tell your eight year old it’s up to them to save the world. Especially don’t tell your fucking hypersensitive hyper-intellectual eight year old it’s up to them. Do not tell a child who’s just been hit by the overwhelming weight of the chaotic difficulty that is decency and humanity in the world that it’s their job, their responsibility, to “use their talents” to fix things. 

They’re eight fucking years old. Their job is to learn how to be kind and learn how to tie their own shoes, to learn how to regulate their emotions and behaviours, to let their brains expand, to learn how to think, to do all the things eight year olds need to do in a safe space so they can be best prepared to join the huge overwhelming effort of making the world better, with the rest of us, when they’re grown up. 

Nobody can save the world by themselves. It’s possible we’re not even up to it en masse and there’s seven billion of us and counting and it’ll probably still take another hundred years or so before we get our shit together enough that we can save ourselves. One eight year old sure as fuck can’t, and the best that any one of us can really hope to do is figure out how not to make it worse. 

Which is a much harder proposition when you’re exhausted, anxious and miserable from the three mental health disorders that you developed because when you were eight and your ability to cognitively grasp the vastness of human suffering massively exceeded your emotional ability to process and deal with it AND your critical thinking skills to take that apart and grasp the impossibility of it, someone loaded you down like Atlas. 

Do not tell your eight year old that they owe their soul to the world. Or that they’re letting people down by not “living up to potential”. Your eight year old as a human owes other people basic decency and human consideration, and their best “potential” is a life wherein they have found themselves a space to be content and sturdy and solid in the world so that they can best act out that decency and human consideration. 

That is the only “potential” anyone needs to worry about. 

This has been your intermittent Feelings-Dump by Feather about Kids and that post and how she just wants to go back in time, find all of you when you were six, tell you you’re good enough, and take you to play in the playground. Or read a book. Or get ice-cream. Or whatever.