Scissors, Paper, Stone

I love comics! They make me laugh and fill me with a sense of wonder at the different way people can look at life. Some of the stories are so real and universal in nature ... just like this one!

As a child growing up in Singapore, I used to play "Scissors, Paper, Stone" with my friends. It was not just a game. Often we used it to see who would go first in another game. Friends in neighbouring Malaysia played the same game.

As an adult living in Cmabodia and working among young people, I found them playing exactly the same game! I felt most at home because it was something I was familiar with from my childhood. We were from different generations, cultures and languages, but our game was exactly the same. They too used the game as a means of seeing who would go first in another game.

Then I read this comic strip. The cartoonist, Jim Toomey, is an American. The comic strip is set in Micronesia. The characters are all sea creatures. Yet, here they are playing the same game as I did as a child! And the same game as my young Cambodian friends were playing! Granted the sea creatures called one of the items a "rock" instead of a "stone", but what's the difference anyway?

We may be so very different from each other - language, culture, physical appearance, etc - but we have at least one thing in common - this game! Are we so different after all? I wonder...

But since this game requires us to have at least knowledge of the words scissors, paper and stone/rock in another language before we can play it with those from another culture, we still have to learn a new language. It isn't such a chore. You'll get to learn so many other games in that culture!

Learn a language, embrace a new culture!

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