Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I once had the privilege of being a teacher. This was decades ago, in London, in another of those previous lives. I was, briefly, maybe the only male Infant teacher in London. I would never even think about doing that job nowadays, because I can already imagine the storm of fear and accusation that could so easily erupt around a male person wanting to teach small children. Times have changed.
Back then, there was a feeling that children were completely surrounded by female figures, and there should be more variety for them. Infant schools were exclusively female, and everybody paid lip-service to the idea of welcoming men into that area of the profession.
Ask the caretaker to clear the rubbish out of it
I remember my first teaching job, where the head teacher gushed with delight while the Inspector showed me round, and waited until he had gone before turning to me and saying – ‘The toilet’s for use by the female staff. I think there might be another one. You’ll have to ask the caretaker to clear the rubbish out of it.’ That was when Women’s’ Lib was just getting going. I could see clearly what they were talking about, because I was at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Anyway, I loved teaching, and I adored children (still do), but I didn’t fit in well in schools, so that career didn’t last very long. But I loved their minds, full of empty space they were eager to fill, and their ability to learn at a terrific rate. They didn’t just want knowledge, they wanted to do things better. And I wanted to help them.
You must be a jellyfish!
Children never failed to surprise me. I remember one little girl come running up to me in the playground. ‘Do you like jelly?’ she asked me. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘Do you like fish?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Then you must be a jellyfish!’ This was apparently the funniest thing ever. Plainly she was learning to put things together, and experimenting with words and meanings. As well as having a lot of fun. 
With my adult’s brain I realised that there’s no actual connection between jelly and fish, apart from the jellyfish word, because these organisms are jelly-like. And there’s no actual connection between liking jelly and liking fish, and, of course, liking jellyfish doesn’t make you one.
I found myself thinking about this very thing. I’m a fan of reason and rationality, and I’m not very supportive of laziness. Not deserved rest and relaxation after lots of necessary or useful work, but simple laziness, of the ‘why do today what you can put off tomorrow’ kind. I think if a thing’s worth doing, you should just get on with it. You’ll feel good and virtuous afterwards, and you’ll have contributed to the well-being of yourself as well as possibly your family, community and possibly the planet. It’s a no-brainer.
Actually cooking something
The laziness I refer to is the self-justifying kind, which stops people reading to their children, or going for walks, or visiting museums, or ever actually cooking something rather than shoving something from Iceland in the microwave. It’s the avoidance of actually thinking about things and thereby exercising the brain. Having a brain like ours is like owning a brand-new car, but never driving it because you can’t be bothered to open the garage door.
For me, the jellyfish joke was like a window onto another world. I started to imagine all sorts of things. I remembered seeing a photo of a fish riding a bicycle, and I wondered how such a thing was actually possible. I thought about actually having a fish as a friend. What activities could a fish and I actually share? How would language work? Obviously, without Disney or millions of years of evolution time, the likelihood of finding a fish that could read. Or talk. Or go to the cinema.
They just don’t do anything for me
I wondered if fish have personalities. My jury is still out on that one, because of lack of evidence. So, probably, one fish can be expected to behave pretty much the same as another fish of the same species. So I thought about fish in general. I thought I might be able to like fish in a tank, but I got bored by that even before finishing the thought. Apologies to those of you who love your fish, I mean no insult, they just don’t do anything for me.
I did learn to scuba-dive in the Caribbean, and I loved floating along in the gentle current above a tropical reef, watching all the varieties of gloriously-coloured fish frisk and dart to and fro. It was like walking along Oxford Street, filled with shoppers from all over the world, all managing to avoid you as they scurry past. I particularly liked the boxfish, like badly-made spotty folded paper boxes. And the parrot fish had amazing lips. Most of all I liked the moray eels. They were intense velvety black, often with tiny silver spots, so they looked like the darkest night sky. They had tiny angry eyes and a big mouthful of teeth, but they always backed off.
Diving amongst these glorious creatures
I used to like eating fish too, of course, before I became a vegetarian, so I could have liked fish as foodstuff. One of the sad things for me about my time in the Caribbean was diving amongst these glorious creatures and then see the fishermen bringing in the day’s catch, the same species, their eyes dead and lifeless and the colours already faded to grey.
There are fish I definitely wouldn’t like. Groupers terrify me, because of an early Wilbur Smith book. Stone fish give me the willies, and I just don’t like the idea of octopuses. Sharks and barracuda can be quite scary, and I’m not so sure about them. There are sharks whose appearance would give me a heart attack, but I’ve actually stroked the skin of a nurse shark 25 metres down, resting in a cave. They are my size, and completely harmless. There’s also the wonderfully large and awesome whale shark, the largest fish of all, as big as a bus. I like that. And manta rays. I’d love to swim with some of them.
So I can’t say I like fish without lots of provisos.
What’s there not to like about it?
As for jelly, what’s there not to like about it? Actually, my childhood was cared by the habit of unthinking adults to place the contents of various tins inside the jelly, completely ruining it. I was a fussy eater, and there were lots of things I wouldn’t eat. Mostly because the feel of them made me retch.
Sometimes a hateful adult would try to force me to eat pieces of peach or pineapple, because they mistakenly thought it would build my character or something. I would inevitably retch until I was sick, and they had to clear it up. It was no less than they deserved. Once I realised that it was the feel rather than the taste, I was able to reclaim all these food types, but that was later. And the fruit-in-jelly thing was hardly the jelly’s fault.
Jelly. It’s good. I do like it. Unreservedly.
I do share quite a lot of DNA with jellyfish
I can absolutely say that I don’t like jellyfish. Although I wasn’t asked whether I liked them. There was an inference that I might be one, and I can categorically deny that. Nowadays I know that I do share quite a lot of DNA with jellyfish, but I’m also genetically related to a banana, which doesn’t give either of them any claims to genuine kinship.
I was able that day to go on a very pleasant journey in my mind as a result of that wonderful but flawed joke, and it makes me smile, even though my smile is a million miles away from its original intention.
Every day is littered with moments like these. We should be on the lookout for them.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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