Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

Don’t touch it! Don’t you see what it is?

Francisco Miraval

Any good mother will prevent her child from getting close to any potential danger. Yelling or moving her arms, the mother will stop her child from getting hurt or worse. For that reason, I was not surprised when I heard a mother telling to her son: Don’t touch it! Don’t you see what it is? But I was indeed surprised when I discover what caused the concern.

The incident happened inside a second-hand store. In those stores, it is not uncommon to find objects that could hurt a little boy. Therefore, I assumed the boy attempted to touch a tool, perhaps a saw or something similar, which could certainly cut his hands.  But that was not the case.

I thought that perhaps among the used items there was some disgusting garbage, or an undesirable item, or perhaps a dead animal. Yet, that was not the case either.

The mother and her child were not far away from me, so I turned to see what could have prompted the mother to issue such a warning to her child. Before I was able to speculate any longer, the mother removed all my doubts: Don’t touch it! Don’t you see what it is? It’s a book!

That was the reason for the warning: a book. The boy was next to a table with used book and he took one in his hands, causing the mother to tell him not to do it. It was a not a venomous snake or a pile of garbage. It was not an old knife or a repugnant insect. The horror the mother experience about the safety of his son was a book.

I know that this situation (which I really saw in person) is not an indication of any trend and should not be used to draw any conclusions. But I can’t stop thinking that perhaps this young mother is not the only one who is asking her child not to touch (that is, not to read) books.

It is true that during many millennia humanity did not have books and it may be true that we are at the beginning of a new era when traditional books will disappear to be replaced by other means of accessing knowledge. Yet, books are still here and it seems at least some them have become dangerous in the hands of little boys.

I wonder how the mother of this story would have reacted had the child touched a toy, a movie, or a videogame. Perhaps she would have also prevented him from touching it.

And what is the boy thinking now about books? Perhaps he is not thinking anything because it was just an isolated incident he soon forgot. Or perhaps he will never touch a book again. I don’t know, but sometimes those early warnings remain with us all our lives.

Dr. Luis Fernandez, a Peruvian writer living in New Mexico, recently told me that, “We don’t lose our culture. We let culture go when we stop reading”.

Go Back