All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum Page A

systems for pools. Indoors, outdoors, on the ground, in the sea, or in the sky—no task too big or small. It’s a large company and he’s been their gold-medal salesman for years.
    “Stand back, give me AIR!” is his war cry.
    His personal hero is a man named James Murry Spengler. In 1907 Spengler was a janitor in a department store in Ohio. But he was going to have to give up his job because the mechanical carpet sweeper he had to use kicked up so much dust and mold, he had developed chronic allergy problems. So Spengler solved his problem by inventing the first vacuum cleaner.
    You’d laugh to see the original model—made out of a pillowcase, a soapbox, a fan, and yards of tape. Still, the device not only worked, it solved Spengler’s allergy problems and saved his career as a janitor. You’ve never heard of Spengler because he sold the patent to a man whose name you do know, William Hoover.
    My friend the salesman reveres Spengler because he took common items he found at home and, using the most obvious natural resource,
air
, he changed domestic history. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this story from my former neighbor. When he told it to me one more time last week, I couldn’t resist asking him if he was still a hypocrite.
    He blushed. Smiled. “Yes.”
    Perhaps hypocrite is not quite the right word. Maybe “philosopher.”
    I’ll explain the accusation and you can decide.
    Early on in our neighbor experience, I noticed a profound contradiction in the life of this air salesman. It puzzled me. I’d be out in my yard and would look up and see him mowing his yard with an old hand-powered push mower. Then he would pile up the grass clippings using an equally old-fashioned hand rake. Finally, he would sweep his sidewalk and driveway with a classic straight broom and pick up the piles with a dustpan. In the fall he raked his leaves by hand—no blower. And when he tidied his car, he swept it out with a whisk-broom. Where was all the machinery that sucked things up and blew things away?
    One day I confronted him and he confessed.
    He had once tried to sell his wares to an Amish farmer in Iowa whose religious and social values did not allow the use of electricity and gasoline engines. The Amish believe that those things that do not serve the family, the community, or the individual well should be avoided. Noisy engines separate people and make it hard for them to sing together while they work, and even harder to think when they work alone. Hand tools are cheap, easy to repair, and give the user good exercise. Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life.
    When my friend’s life gets to be too much of an air raid and he needs sanity, he remembers the Amish. He goes out into his yard with his hand tools for an afternoon of seeking wisdom in simplicity. A noisy machine won’t help when his soul feels empty. In his middle years he has acquired the wisdom of choosing appropriate technology. Pushing leaves with mechanical air is not the same as hearing the wind blow through the trees.

 
     
     

    T HE M ERMAID
    G IANTS, WIZARDS, AND DWARFS was the game to play.
    Being left in charge of about eighty children seven to ten years old, while their parents were off doing parenty things, I mustered my troops in the church social hall and explained the game. It’s a large-scale version of Rock, Paper, and Scissors, and involves some intellectual decision-making. But the real purpose of the game is to make a lot of noise and run around chasing people until nobody knows which side you are on or who won.
    Organizing a roomful of wired-up grade-schoolers into two teams, explaining the rudiments of the game, achieving consensus on group identity—all this is no mean accomplishment, but we did it with a right good will and were ready to go.
    The excitement of the chase had reached a critical mass. I yelled out: “You have to decide
now
which you are—a GIANT, a WIZARD, or a DWARF!”
    While the