Drawn to Mischief

Society is inspired and influenced by many different sources. For a native, the scope of inspiration is much smaller. A native appears to be influenced by the caretaker, mimicking their movements and words. They are influenced by natives from other tribes that they come across in their quest for knowledge. Perhaps most of all, a young native is influenced by their sibling, (most especially their older sibling).

Perhaps it comes from a need to be accepted by the older sibling; perhaps it is merely that they are in awe of this pint sized person of whose shadow they live in. Whatever the case, I have observed this time and time again in the natives and it made me reminiscent of my younger days.

You see, as I made my own journey through adolescence, I did not have a sibling to go through the expedition with. I did however have cousins from a neighboring tribe with whom I went through many of my adventures. One of which I was reminded of this week as I watched the younger native striving to impress his older sibling.

It took me back to a jungle some 20 years ago. As I happily played with my companion we kept getting interrupted by his younger sibling who was distraught about a rainbow of all things. Their jungle had recently gotten new flooring, a beautiful, plush white carpet. In doing so the youngster had noticed that a rainbow had made its way through the glass window and onto the new carpeting. Her caretaker had apparently informed her that the rainbow would in fact disappear as night fell.

After much pestering by the younger native my companion and I decided if we couldn't have fun without her then we may as well have some fun with her as only impish siblings and cousins are capable of. We colluded to get her into trouble for the sake of our own amusement and have her place some parchment directly on the new carpet to make an imitation of the rainbow. By doing so we were sure she would be caught and imprisoned in her cave for not using parchment on the proper surface.

As it turns out per our suggestion the young native decided that perhaps an even better solution would be to make sure the rainbow stayed as it was eternally. We watched with a mix of horror and delight as the young one slowly and carefully used permanent markers to color in the rainbow.

When she finished their caretaker arrived on cue to find two faces of guilt ridden pleasure and one of innocent delight. She shrieked for the siblings to retreat to their caves indefinitely leaving me to sit next to her as the smoke began to billow out of her ears. Seemingly lost for words or context she repeated over and over, “I can’t believe they did that, I can’t believe they did that!” To this day I assert that I had the more severe sentence over my cohorts who got to rest safely in their caves to wait out the storm. Alas, that is the influence of a sibling.