Now We Are Six

[undyingking]

I just realized something that seems a little strange: I never think of, or describe, children as being 'about 6'. Show me a child of unknown vintage, and I'll usually guess them at the right age plus or minus a year or so. But for some mysterious reason, my mental child-size/maturity map goes straight from 'about 5' to 'about 7'. I don't have any similar lacuna on any other part of the age range. It's as though I have a mental block of some sort about being 6 -- or, at least, about other people being 6.

The year my little sister was 6 we had a great drought and a plague of ladybirds¹ -- perhaps that was traumatic in some way. I can't remember much about the year I myself was 6, but I remember hardly anything of my early years.

Does this all just sound like so much bibble, or does it strike a curious chord in anyone?

---

1 Actually, there was a traumatic incident connected with the ladybirds, now I think about it.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I'm the other way around in that my classification bands for kids tend to be "baby", "toddler", "nursery", "infant", "junior" and so on, with six years old being squarely in the middle of the "infant" category.

It doesn't just sound like bibble, though. I love little nuggets of inexplicable psychology like that. And plagues of ladybirds - I love them too.

My earliest memory is from when I was six. It's the age I learned to ride a bike, which make a big difference to my life.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Learning to ride a bike was hugely important to me, too -- I even remember the date, April 17th. But that was when I was 7.

I have a load of memories from a trip to India, which calculation tells me must have happened when I was 6. But I don't associate it with "being 6" in the same way I associate the bike memory with "being 7".

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Does this all just sound like so much bibble, or does it strike a curious chord in anyone?

It sounds like so much bibble and it strikes a curious chord.

For some inexplicable (and previously unobserved) reason, 'about 6' seems more precise than 'about 5'. Go figure.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, it does, you're right. Hmm.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

We are used to rounding off to the nearest 5. If someone tells you it's 25 past 10, you would probably expect it to be to the nearest 2 or 3 minutes, if they said 26 minutes past, you'd probably expect them to mean it!

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Plausible, except that 'about 6' also seems more precise than 'about 7'.

Maybe - and I'm groping for logic that I think might well be entirely absent - 'about 6' seems more precise because even numbers have to be exactly divisible by 2.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I have to part company with you there. I'd say that that 6 and 7 give a similar impression of precision to me!

(Oddly, I could see 7.5 as *less* precise, because it is a nice, neat three-quarters... but that may might just be me).