The Folly of Idle Hands

Have you ever been in a training workshop where the food was extremely good but the topic and facilitator were boring to a fault? Do you remember how you used the provided stationery for the unintended purpose of keeping your idle hands busy? Do you recall the intricate patterns you ravished on the blank pages? Do you also see the way you thickened the outlines of your yet-to-be-defined artwork? Worry not. You are not alone. You are just one of the many Kenyans who occasionally or constantly suffer from the ‘idle hands syndrome’.

It is said that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. I assume then that the mind is where all those evil ideas are formed. It naturally follows that these ideas need to be actualised. The hands are therefore the assembly line where the final products are released to the world.

Graffiti on Furniture

Before artists can get licenses from the City Council to paint beautiful graffiti on walls, they must have had the opportunity to practice and hone their art. They must have been a headache when they were in school because of filling every available inch of their desk surface with undecipherable graffiti. I noted that most desks in my daughters’ school are full of graffiti. Before I could ask where the children learn the bad habit from, I noticed similar, if not uglier, graffiti on the teachers’ tables.

I remember when I was in school; I could get corporal punishment (it was still legal) for putting a dot on my desk. As a consequence, the desks we used in primary school had been in service for over fifty years. They even had a neat round hole on top where the ink pot used to be inserted from back in the days when writing quills were still in use. That was long before fountain pens were invented.

Conversion of Text Books into Exercise Books

Any text book that has been used by more than one student will bear witness of any such students’ ignorance and cluelessness in their studies. How, you may ask! The said students will have made the text book into a note book where they jot what they think are the correct answers; but which will make you wonder who their parents are.

Again using my generation as a bench mark; I remember textbooks we inherited from those who had gone before us. The only reason we stopped using them was because East Africa went metric and the books became invalid since they were using miles instead of kilometres, feet and yards instead of metres, pounds instead of kilograms, and pints instead of litres. These books were still in pristine condition by the time they were ‘retired’.

Reorganising the House

Have you ever hosted a guest who wants not just to touch everything, but to also lift it up and inspect it closely? Did you also note that such a person was almost always clumsy and was prone to drop those particularly fragile and irreplaceable antique items you love to collect during your rare travels? I have hosted such people and the tension they create makes their visits seem longer than is naturally bearable.

Have you also noted that those ‘idle-handed’, clumsy, and ‘touchy’ people will never put things back where or how they found them? They will either place them back on a different shelf or if they place them back on the right one, they will do it in that irritatingly lopsided way. They also tend to place things back on edges in a way that even a small breeze can topple them over.

Resetting Mobile Phones

I am of the opinion that a mobile phone is not a toy. I therefore cannot understand why people give children their mobile phones to play with. A friend I had been trying to reach one time later told me that his recently acquired phone had died. On enquiring why, the guy told me that his baby daughter had drooled on it.

I have had friends whose phone settings had been tampered with so much by their children that there was no hope of bringing them back to normal. The kids have set up call barring to the parents’ boss’ number and others have called emergency services and given fake reports of burning houses and fighting parents.

Formatting Computers

I once lent a young friend my computer. I had bought that computer new and installed genuine windows on it. I had also saved lots of photos which I had taken during travels to such rare places as Mount Elgon and Dadaab. On getting the computer back, I got the warning on screen that my copy of windows might not be genuine. On further investigation, I discovered that the hard disk had been wiped clean and I had lost all those photos and may other documents.

That boy had not planned to tell me he had formatted my computer after crashing it. I had to squeeze it out of him. I hate to imagine what he had done to crash a powerful brand new computer. It was a typical case of chronic idle hands.

Dismantling Gadgets

When I was growing up, we rarely got shop-bought toys. We usually made our own toys and we took good care of them. On the rare occasions that we got new toys, we treasured them and they were handed down through the generations. Today, the life of a toy is measured in hours rather than in years as was the case in our days. Kids are more interested in knowing how many component parts make up a toy car than they are interested in how fast it can move.

P.S. While appreciating that this is a generation of idle hands, I can’t wait to see what standard one children will do with the promised ‘GK’ laptops.