Form and Function: The Mad Scientist

I was thinking this morning about how Rollie seems to see everything in terms of its form or its function. i guess that we as adults do this, but that we have fine-tuned our classifications, so that we can barely see or comprehend the generalizations that Rollie makes in his mind.

What made me think of this? Rollie handed me a hair clip, saying "hair" as he handed it to me for me to put in my hair. (No, I wasn't going to wear it - he just decided upon seeing it that i needed to put it in my hair. For Rollie's set, when you see something, and you recognize its purpose, you immediately put the said object to its purpose, whether or not there is a need for it at that moment or not.)

I started thinking about all the things that Rollie will hand me to put in my hair - Bobby pins, barettes, hairbrush, comb, or hairdryer. Even the diffuser. It amazes me the connections he will make and the little everyday things that he picks up from us, that we don't even attempt to teach him. Occasionally, though, he will hand me something that appears to him to serve a "hair" function, but which in reality only looks like something else that serves a hair function, but actually is used for another purpose. Like brushing your teeth. Yep, sometimes Rollie will do an uh-oh, and hand me a toothbrush and want me to brush my hair with it. Very funny.

Rollie sees balls in everything, too. Sure, a ball is a ball, by any other name. A globe is a ball, but if you see a globe, you don't say, "Ball." You say, "Globe." Rollie says ball.

This made me think about how he sees things in term of their shape, or color, or function. He is constantly making classifications of different objects, where we adults just accept each object for what we know it to be. Not what else it might be.

It is like having my own little mad scientist.