A very fishy tale.

As many of you may know, since last year, WordPress has started this daily prompt thing, at least in the mobile app, where it asks people a question and you can write a blog post answering it. I like to use various kinds of prompts for my personal journalling, so I thought it was neat and used a few in my personal journal, but I never actually wrote a blog post answering any of them, which perhaps is a shame since they’re actually meant for blogging. 😀 So, as I have a bit of time on my hands and badly need a distraction from my (yet again) sensorily anxious brain, I thought it’s a good time to use at least one of them as intended. Today’s prompt is the following: 

 

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily? 

 

If not for the fact that I’ve just transitioned from PlexTalk to SensePlayer, I could write about PlexTalk again and old-ish tech stuff in general, even though my PlexTalk isn’t really old as such, because I’d only got this particular copy that I own currently some three years ago, and it’s not like the technology is super ancient either, but generally it’s no longer supported and does feel kind of old compared with, for example, my new SensePlayer, or smartphones, or other things like that. But while I still haven’t fully gotten used to the SensePlayer yet, I no longer use the PlexTalk, so I think its retirement has officially begun. I have a lot of old things in my room, but most of them are more for decorative purposes or something similar, rather than for being used. So the oldest thing that comes to my mind that I still find very useful on a regular basis is one little, plastic fish that I got from my Mum. 

 

For what on Earth could I find an old, plastic fish so very useful? Well, perhaps some of my more regular and attentive readers might recall that I’ve already mentioned it twice, for example in a relatively recent post about blindisms. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t know what blindisms are, I’d recommend you read up on it before continuing with this post, just on some basic level, because I’m going to talk about them in this post. For example you may see this Wikipedia article. Also, just like in that post about blindisms that I wrote earlier, I’m mostly going to refer to mine as stims, because they are similar phenomena and the word stim is less awkward to use casually, and also because I honestly think I have both, and the specific sensorism (sensorism is a term that encompasses both stims and blindisms and other sensory integration issues) that I’m going to be talking about seems to fall into both categories. 

 

So, yes, you guessed it right, I use this little fishy for stimming purposes. But, as my grandad always astoundingly says, the best starting point of a story is at the beginning, so let’s rewind a bit. 

 

When I was a very young kid, I had a large, metal box, in which I had all kinds of toys. Except the vast majority of them weren’t even actual toys, but any objects that I considered synaesthetically pleasing or interesting in some way. For those unaware, I have lexical-tactile/tactile-lexical synaesthesia (and gustatory-lexical too, for that matter), although it’s more like I just call it synaesthesia for lack of a better word because I don’t think it is exactly like your regular synaesthesia, because it can shift a little over time, and because I have some evidence to suspect that my so-called synaesthetic associations aren’t necessarily born spontaneously, but more as a result of when I for example heard a specific word while holding a particular object, and I can have multiple word associations with one object, or  multiple tactile associations with one word, which I guess “real” synaesthetes don’t have either. So basically what I mean by synaesthetically interesting is that I had some fun word associations with them, often with multiple words, and also liked the way these objects felt to touch. Some of these “toys” were interesting-looking clip-on earrings,  exotic seashells that I got from my sailor uncle, some small, metal objects from my Dad’s garage, agates from my grandma’s necklace,  chestnuts (until I realised that chestnut can go bad and then don’t feel synaesthetically pleasing at all, lol), pieces of polished amber,  brace clips, even some totally random but interesting bits like a piece of metal that my grandad once drove over and it turned into a weird shape, but most of all, iron balls from car bearings, of all sizes, and marbles. I loved iron balls and marbles! Every day, I asked my Mum to give me this box, because I guess it stood somewhere high up, plus it was quite heavy, and I’d sit with it in the living room, often listening to some story or children’s songs on a tape or something, and I’d play with all these objects by fidgeting with them in my palm. I would wiggle them around or wave them between my fingers, or bounce them on my palm, whatever felt most comfortable and intuitive with a specific object, then I’d put it aside and pick another one from the box and so on and so forth. At the same time, I would make up a story in my brain, using words that I associated with every object that I played with. And since like I said I often associate multiple words with one object, it never got boring. I drew inspiration from absolutely everything – what people were talking about around me, or what I heard them talk about before that got stuck in my mind for whatever reason, something that I was thinking of (fun way of processing your thoughts, seriously), any recent fleeting fascinations, variations on children’s stories that I was listening to in the meantime or all kinds of folklore fairytales that my Mum read to me, anything I didn’t understand but was trying to comprehend and familiarise myself with, etc. – It was oddly satisfying. Usually I got so carried away that my Dad says I often had a rather peculiar facial expression while doing this and I’d talk to myself quietly whatever I was coming up with. It was as hilarious for outside observers as it was puzzling. 

 

When I went to preschool, I kept doing it when at home, but since it was four hours away I only got to be home every other weekend initially, and even less often later on, and I couldn’t really (and wouldn’t even) take the whole box there with me. I did still take a lot of knick-knacks with me and played them there whenever I got a little while to be by myself, but quite early on other kids found it interesting to know whatever I was doing, and soon after that a lot of my “toys” got inadvertently broken by some of them. I felt a bit resentful, and from that point onward, I decided to only bring marbles there, and I’d usually retreat to the dressing room to play with them so that no one would disturb me, but also because I think I gradually started to kind of realise that it isn’t really what most people do, to put it mildly, and slowly started to feel kind of self-conscious about it. Marbles sure are the greatest thing since sliced bread (or even before sliced bread), but they aren’t really optimal for that sort of play. So I kept losing my marbles successively, and it wasn’t as easy to retrieve them as it were at home. While in preschool, I had particularly good relationships with the support staff (like the cook and the cleaner), because I often “hid” in the kitchen and talked to them while we were supposed to be playing in the playroom, as I had no idea what the flip you’re supposed to do in a playroom, and they kept telling me for years after I left whenever we’d see that they still kept finding my marbles in the dressing room. I had a huge supply of marbles, so I didn’t have to worry about completely running out of them, but that made my play a bit less satisfiable than before. Also, having just one kind of object to play with meant that my inspiration for stories became a lot more limited, so I had to find other sources of inspiration than just the object alone and would make up very intricate mental games to aid me in that and provide endless brain stimulation. Over time though, I guess I must have felt a bit unfulfilled in this regard. And not doing it didn’t feel like an option, because as I wrote on here before, not being able to stim is kind of like a mental equivalent of not being able to pee when you want to, and as a small child I didn’t have enough brain power to hold in the “pee” I guess. 

 

I remember that when I was in the playroom one day, I spotted some sort of box that had plastic fish of various size in it. I picked up a small one that seemed quite cute to me, and rather instinctively started fidgeting with it. I didn’t associate it with any specific words really, but I didn’t need it at that point. Because of its physical properties, it looked just as if it was made for this exact purpose. And I was badly craving a proper fix of my favourite stim, so, without much thinking, I just appropriated the fish. Surely no one would even notice such a small fish missing, especially that, from what I recall, it was very close to a school break and we were basically about to go home the next day or maybe even that same day. I only got hit with qualms once I got home, but they only lasted until I started playing. 

 

Indeed, from what I know, no one from the staff noticed the missing fish, but I didn’t get to enjoy it for too long either. I just don’t recall having it for very long, but while I did, it served me very well. I think it might have gotten lost while moving between my two “homes” 🤮 . By the time it got lost though, I think I must have already started properly hiding with my eccentric hobby and would never do it in front of other people or even when I suspected that someone with good enough sight may be close enough to see anything (although initially I wasn’t so good at establishing from what distance people can see things 😀 ). I was never explicitly told not to do it, or can’t remember anything like that, unlike what is the case with a lot of blind people and their more obvious/common/very objectively visually unappealing blindisms, but over time I started to feel annoyed with people like my parents laughing good-humouredly at it, or asking what I was doing (as if it wasn’t obvious, which showed me quite clearly that other people don’t do it), or not understanding the purpose of it (though I myself probably didn’t either at such a young age, I just thought it was lots of fun). Yet it was way too cool to just quit it all together, so I did it only when I was/thought I was alone, or in bed before sleep etc. 

 

So when I lost that fish, I was in a bit of a conundrum as for what to do now. I got very creative with it by then and, if I felt really pressed or extremely bored, I could usually find something that could pass as a “stimming toy”, but was not optimal. At the same time, I couldn’t really say purely theoretically what made an object optimal for stimming for me, unless I had it in my hand. So it was hard to think of what I should even be looking for. That’s a prime example of a first world problem, I suppose. 😀 Eventually I figured that since a toy fish worked so well for me in the past, maybe I should just get another fish. And so I started to pester my Mum for “some toy fish”. My poor Mum had no idea why, or even what kind of fish I had in mind, and I couldn’t really be much more precise, especially that I absolutely couldn’t tell her what I needed those fish for. One day she was in some sort of store that sold some totally different things, but they had some sort of decorative plastic fish hanging in the entrance, and my Mum asked if she could buy them. They were apparently rather puzzled, but let Mum buy a few of them, I guess she got me five or so. And I was quite ecstatic, because they turned out to be just right, again. 

 

From then on, I always had to have one of those fish close to me. Quite naturally, people assumed that, well, I must just like those fish. But I didn’t really have any deeper feelings for them as such, they just served their purpose well and I was dependent on them, just like you’re dependent on your toothbrush and take it with you whenever you go on a trip or anything like that. I would always feel quite distressed when none of my fish were in sight, which further made it seem like I must have just loved these fishies and my Mum seemed to think it was quite cute or something. Once I became reasonably proficient at reading, I could slowly let go of all my mental games and start using written word to get me started with my stims. Sometimes in my early teen years I’d even do such a thing where I’d read an actual book, and at the same time I’d create my own story in parallel using specific words from the book, sometimes related to the book in some way – like a fanfic of sorts or something – and sometimes totally different. These days I’m not as good at multitasking to do it effectively. 😀 

 

One Christmas, soon after I got those plastic fishies from Mum, I also got quite a large assortment of very lovely glass fish, seashells and other stuff like that from my aunt. I never was particularly close with that aunt and other than that, my siblings and I usually got rather generic presents from her, so I assume she must have asked my Mum, feeling clueless as for what one gives such weird Bibiels for Christmas, and my Mum must have let her in on my apparent newly discovered marine interests, plus everyone and their dog always knew that Bibiel liked glass stuff. I was really happy with all of that and, as I said, found them very lovely and thought it would be cool to play with them, but they didn’t turn out as good for stimming as the fish I got from Mum. So I mostly used those glass fish when I didn’t have any plastic ones nearby, and if there was no fish at all, I’d play with a seashell or something else. Whenever I played for longer with any of the glass fish, especially if I got particularly immersed with it, it made most sense to me to hold my hand at a rather weird angle, and usually at some point the play was cut short by a nerve pain that sooner or later suddenly hit my wrist from straining it, or my fingers got all sore. 😀 Over time, one of the plastic fish chipped rather significantly, leaving it with one fin that was sharper and rough, and for a long time this was the only fish that I had with me at school and played with it a lot, and the way I held it usually while stimming made it chafe my skin with the sharp fin over and over, which I didn’t really care much about, although I still have like a very mini scar from that even though I no longer stim with that fish. 

 

I still have some fish, both plastic and glass ones, left, though not as many as I had originally because many got lost over time. BUt these days one is completely enough for me, as my life is a lot more stable and I donn’t travel much or not for long enough distances that I’d need to take the fish with me. So the one fish that I stim with regularly these days is most of the time on my desk. I still get distressed when my Mum places it somewhere else and won’t tell me, and she still doesn’t know why. 😀 She asks me every time the topic of the fish comes up, i.e. when I put into the bag when packing anywhere, or when I ask her where it is etc. but I never give her a satisfiable answer. 

 

And as I think I’ve already shared on here, one of my brain’s “favourite” topics to ruminate over at night when there’s nothing more pressing is what I’ll do when I lose this fish. Yes, I still have some left, but this one is the best. So I think it would be quite stressful If I had to lose it. Not nearly as stressful as if I lost Misha, but still. 

 

Actually, before writing this post, it had never even occurred to me how old this fish is already, it’s insane! 

 

How about you? What is such an item for you, and do you have any sort of emotional attachment to it, or do you just keep using it for so long because it works well? 🙂