Spinning Trouble

  

When I caught Sid playing a game of desk cricket (a solo form of the game that required neither audience, fellow players nor rules – just a pencil doubled as a bat that struck the worn eraser that became the ball) between math problems, I, like the zealous parents of the screen-addicted generation of kids who hoped to improve their children’s attention span and even spin out the genius that hibernate in deep crevices of their busy minds, bought him the most popular toy that is all the rage.

Now, he is seen spinning that little piece of plastic between solving his math problems.

If you are blatantly unaware of the ‘fidget spinners’, you must pinch yourself awake for the world is spinning back to basics having progressed from the age of 8K televisions, quantum computers and 6D video games to little ball-bearing plastic devices that can be rotated around your fingers enticing your busy mind into its futuristic magical spell.

My early mornings were, for a short while, a culmination of physical exercises that involve crawling, crouching with arms stretched out sweeping the darkness enveloping my son’s bedroom and my entire being telescoped into the single sensation of touch trying to locate his spinner, that I feverishly hoped, will exercise my creativity after the puppets I made for Little Princess’s literary week at school became aliens instead of cats.

I went back to listening to Tibetan monks when I heard that the toy claimed by its manufacturers to boost concentration (without tests on rats and guinea pigs) has been banned from classrooms after it became a raging distraction among students.

Physics achieved its purpose when a physicist from Denver warned the spinning generation that a harmonized cascade of at least 10 million fidget spinners (lined with thin circular magnets), aligned in the direction of their spin is enough to throw the Earth’s center of gravity out of alignment causing widespread effects on the climate.

It is no child’s play that 5 million have been sold already.

Just in case the prophecy of the concerned physicist is true, we need not lose sleep over the effects of global warming or a nuclear attack to claim us.

A few million kids fidgeting in unison with little pieces of plastic will do.

No kidding that!