Developmental Snapshot: Patenting The Lay Out Your Clothes

Lay out your clothes, Paris 5th Arrondissement

Like the life of any working parent, mine is far from being a long quiet river (borrowing the expression from the 1988 movie "La vie est un long fleuve tranquille") but rather a hop scotch game, where I have to manage landing into one polygon then another, with the caveat that the game is played on a moving platform with unpredictable speeds, multiple tracks and occasional earthquakes. More or less manageable except when the tracks diverge and even the most skilled classical dancer, which I am not, can not possibly manage a split...Anyway, I could go on with this metaphor but that's not the story I really want to finish telling today.

Let's zoom on a couple moving polygons.

This morning: my oldest has to turn in a satire, loosely based on 1984, and was talking about it enough last evening that I had dystopian dreams a la Fritz Lang.  My middle son's polygon is moving on its own: out the door after a few minor exchanges.  Here comes a higher maintenance polygon: my youngest is late for morning chorus, not stirring and I go wake him up. I have to cross his room littered with crumpled pants, sweaters and other less mentionables. "Did I not tell you that your clothes belong in your closet, not on the floor?". He replies deadpan though still half asleep: "Mom, it's not a mess, it's a technique!"

The supreme court is taking on the issue of patenting for the offspring of Monsanto seeds and lawyers are getting ready to evoke man vs. nature in eloquent fashion. Here is my idea for a satire (but my son has already left and I can't share this): let's patent all these "techniques": messy habits, bad behaviors and the like, and make a fortune suing the people who use them!

Now I have to hop scotch to Psychiatry Grand Rounds....Till Later,

Anne