Newspapers and paper boats
Estelle Mahnuma On e-mail
I learned how to make a paper boat when I was four years old. The paper boat has many complex folds and it takes a lot of skill to make a paper boat. I can make a paper boat very fast because I learned how to make one a long time ago. I usually took a newspaper, I didn't know how to read it so I just made a paper boat. It takes almost fourteen folds to make a paper boat. When it is ready, it looks light, simple, and easy. But it is not so easy to make. When there is a lot of water outside I watch the paper boats float. Sometimes, I make them out of colourful paper and let them sail on the water outside. I did not buy the paper boat from any store. I didn't need money to buy it. It was complex, simple and beautiful. I do not need plastic toys and too many things to play with. One day, my father said that a man should turn out to be the best product. (He didn't say that a woman should be anything. I think he had a fixed idea that a woman is just a housewife.) I do not think that human beings are products. In The Lesson of the Master by Henry James, the writer says that the children were great conformists, living, breathing and practising the norms of society. They were "products", like things, like stooges and stereotypes. Prince Hal in Shakespeare did not want to be like the king. Jessica in Shakespeare said, "Although I am of my father's blood, I am not of his character." Human beings are not products and character is a by-product. People in high positions, in government, businessmen, doctors, etc. they all think that status and money are more important than living a wonderful life. "When gazing at a graph that shows the profits up, their little cup of joy overflows." (Mary Poppins) I do not need the graph to see the profits up. Keep the two coins, or the two pence. It's money. The paper boat is more beautiful and very fascinating.
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