Animal, vegetable, mineral. It used to be a game. In the days preceding the dot com era and Logie Baird's invention.
Children played it, congregated on the porch, while mothers, attired in voluminous skirts, sat erectly in high backed chairs, a half-finished piece of embroidery on their laps, brows puckered in concentration, mainly so that the deftly moving needle didn't get them.
It was a time when it was unwomanly to cry out "ouch" or anything similar. Or swear. Or scream and startle the playing children. A silent tear of frustration was, of course, permitted, as long as nobody saw it.
Especially the fathers, seated adjacently on the porch in lower slung chairs, puffing on pipes that put out aromatic fumes, eyes fixed on an indeterminate mid-distance, their minds perhaps on a game of tombola a little later when the sun dipped another twenty degrees and the purple cape of night descended on everything. Among the children, the guessing game in full swing.
Occasionally the lines would blur. Somebody would misinterpret the clues and get it all wrong. Laughter would erupt. Like being unsure, for example, about the tomato. Word has it, it's a fruit. So it cannot be a vegetable. Is it, therefore, mineral or animal? Is so, which? It certainly doesn't bear animalistic traits. Mineral, then? Okay, go for it... mineral!
Laughter! You guess because you're nearly sure your reasoning has led you in the right direction. It's a bit also like the quiz question: What was Hitler's first name?
Ninety per cent of the respondents, who've heard only one other word preceding Hitler, opt for "Heil". You guess based on what you think is reasonably sound logic, then don't know where to hide when the amusement of others rings out. And so you arrive at a recent image on television that arrests and yet fascinates in a horrifying way.
Everybody watching the evening news sees it but for two seconds there you are reminded of that 'blurred boundary' moment sometimes encountered in the long extinct game of animal, vegetable, mineral.
You wonder at the perspicacity of your readers - the ones who haven't seen it on television. Would they, if you supplied them with a series of clues, figure it out? And so you begin with the first of them: Chain.
Initial wariness
You perceive an initial wariness on the readers' part to guess so early. They cautiously await more hints. So you say, "chains".... then "chained".... Some of them, with narrowed eyes, are beginning to figure but still no guesses. You help the process along: All four limbs, you say. Some who were inclined to thinking dog are now thinking, doubtfully: Dog?
One hundred per cent of them, though, have concluded it's "animal". But what species? Even when you say, "eighty-six years" some of them reason you may have computed that figure in dog years.
But then you supply a further list, "dementia"... "homeless"... "wheelchair"... "self-injury-prone"... "wizened face"... and a new image begins to firm up. Animal, sure, but not dog. Dog's best friend: man.
Until his only daughter could be contacted, the nursing home in whose care this human had been put, had to be (so the explanation goes) tethered (for his own good, to keep him from harming himself).
But the television image of a frail, white-haired old man lying slumped in a wheelchair, hands bound to the arm rests, legs shackled - so he cannot even scratch himself if he want to - elicits a pathos that is beyond description.
It's that blurred reasoning mentioned earlier: He needs to be leashed like a dog for his own safety versus. No human should ever have to undergo such indignity.
Especially when it is still capable of saying to everyone - his "captors/minders" included - repeatedly, despite his bonds, "I love you... I love you."
Animal? Vegetable? Who gets to decide?
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
