I want to hear the rant so I'll ask: why do you dislike Rainbow Fish?

Alright. Strap yourselves in, darlings.

Firstly, you must be aware that I was an intensely individualistic and self-aware five year old, and fairly intelligent as well. By kindergarten I had already worked my way through my children’s Bible, the dictionary, and half of the Chronicles of Narnia, just to name a few books, so even in pre-school I was often given the task of reading to the other children, a task I mostly enjoyed.

In kindergarten, my teacher would usually have me do this with whatever book we were discussing that week, so that she could have time to clean up the mess from our other activities. One week that happened to be that Rainbow Fish book. At the time I was going through a phase where I wanted to be a marine biologist, so everything ocean related was good for me, and at first I liked the design and layout of the book - I remember being very tactile with the shiny scales on the fish. 

And then, as I read the entire thing aloud to my classmates, I had a new emotional experience: pure, unadulterated, seething rage.

Look, the moral of that book is supposedly “sharing is good!” which, hm, even as a child I knew was sort of contextual. It would not be good, for example, for me to share my lunch with someone even if I had the bigger lunch, because my mother was raising me on less than twenty thousand dollars a year and it would have been stupid of me to haphazardly give away food. But even disregarding that “message”, that’s not what actually happens in the story. 

What happens in the story is this: everyone gets jealous that the Rainbow Fish is the brightest and most beautiful, and refuses to be his friend when he won’t cut off parts of himself to give to everyone else. So then he asks an adult figure for advice. And the adult figure pressures him into tearing off parts of himself and giving them to everyone else. And we are supposed to celebrate this as a good thing.

Let me reiterate: we are supposed to agree with the idea that we should dim ourselves, our natural outstanding qualities, in case some random people get upset by or jealous of them. We are supposed to agree with the idea that it’s perfectly fine to pressure people, including children, (because, shockingly, I think of children as people) to sacrifice their individuality and natural characteristics for the sake of fitting in and making stupid, petty friendships that are entirely built on parasitic behavior. This isn’t a plate of cookies that’s being represented here - the message is that the fundamental traits of our nature should be available to hack up whenever the crowd doesn’t agree with them. Or when they covet them.

I opposed this mentality at five years old, and I most certainly oppose it now.

I can’t tell you how many times I got in trouble, by teachers or other adults, for correcting their spelling, or “reading above [my] grade level”, or “doing work that is too difficult”, or any other inane and stupid reasons to penalize a smart child. We discourage exceptional traits on the ridiculous assumption that it’s somehow “unfair” to everyone else to let them be proudly displayed - but the fact is that everyone is the best at something. We have simply devalued certain traits and so are unable to see that.

If we allowed children and adults to flourish where their natural talents truly lie, think of everything we could achieve. But no. This is the message we internalize: the parts of yourself that shine the best and brightest? Mutilate them.

I won’t stand for it.