The AQUARIUS Child

The AQUARIUS Child

The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new, In friendly chat with bird or beast-




And half believe it true.

According to Mother Goose, if your offspring is dressed in blue, he's made of snips
and snails and puppy-dog tails. It baby is wearing pink, she's made of sugar and
spice, and everything nice. But if he or she was born in February, dress him in an
aquamarine cap and electric blue booties and forget that old rhyme. This infant is
made of the raw material of Uranus, and he's going to make you chase him into
tomorrow.

He's a quivering, sensitive, stubborn, independent mass of invention and electrical
impulses. Even if he has a slow and careful Taurus ascendant, his mental processes
will be as fast as Uranian lightning. His thoughts will vibrate like high frequency
radio beams, and as he grows up, you may feel like sending out an S.O.S. yourself.

Every mother and father think their child is special- different and unique, compared
to other youngsters. But this one is just ridiculous. Lots of parents of a young
Aquarian puzzle whether to send him out on the farm, where he won't frighten
neighbors, or let the word casually get around that he may win the Pulitzer prize
someday. Which route should you take? You have a problem. Yes, you do. The
Pulitzer is possible, but my advice would be to try the farm for a few summers and
watch. Observe. Wait. He's liable to invent a new plow, or just eat them out of
house and home. It depends. There's never a cut and dried rule with Aquarians.

I know one New York mother who just called her Uranian son "the Bronx Wonder"
and let it go at that At least her relatives and neighbors were as mystified as she
was. Nobody knew if the nickname meant he had three heads or he was headed for
the Hall of Fame. As it turned out, he was a pretty good basketball player, and most
folks thought that's why he had the tag. But they shouldn't have been so hasty. The
story's not over yet. He's presently rotating between composing the score for a
musical which may go on Broadway or in the wastebasket, playing bit parts in
detective films, and making himself available for TV commercials. (The kind that
need men from Mars types for flying saucer approaches on soft-sell automobile
spots.) He's also working on an invention in his bedroom (between watching the
Mets play and eating pickle sandwiches), but since he won't tell anyone what it is, I
can't give you any clues. He has a kind of thing about clocks and watches, so it may
have something to do with a time machine (a common Aquarian obsession). Well,
well see. There's no rush. Lots of Aquarians don't break loose and shower electric
sparks of genius on a waiting world until they're a young fifty. It makes it all a little
nervewracking, waiting around like that. Of course, there are quite a few

Aquarian child prodigies, but we're tangled up enough trying to figure out your
average Aquarian youngster (and I use the term average loosely).

He may end up working for the FBI or a private eye outfit (he loves to figure out
mysteries), and become an ordinary, sensible, conservative citizen. (Don't hold your
breath, but it's a possibility.) We'd better concentrate on his tender years. That way,




you'll have a fighting chance to guide this Uranus rocket in some kind of direction.

Until maturity has mellowed Uranian influences, and society has molded more
conventional attitudes, an Aquarian youngster can be strongly negative. The
immediate reaction to a command (or even a pleasant suggestion) is often an
emphatic no. But let him think about it, mull it over, and it's surprising how many
times his final reaction will be sensible-the answer he found by himself correct and
acceptable.

These boys and girls can be calm and sweetly docile on the surface, but the north
wind can turn them suddenly topsy turvy. (Except that, with an Aquarian, it could
be turvy topsy. You can expect anything.) Unpredictable in their behavior, but
lovable and often amusing, the February child can be quite a spinning propeller to
contend with. I used that analogy because Aquarians and Uranus rule air flight,
planes and Charles Lindbergh and things like that. Yet, these youngsters are so full
of contradictions, instead of taking to flight naturally, many of them have a strange,
unreasonable fear of planes and elevators-even electricity (also ruled by Uranus). It
isn't easy to direct them or channel them. They have no idea where they're going,
but they have definite ideas about how to get there.

Raising and teaching these "wonders" can be a big responsibility. Their minds
combine fixed practicality with uncanny perception and sharp, probing logic. Mix it
all up and it can be acutely embarrassing, like when your little Aquarian asks your
best friend why she got her face lifted (she did)-or asks your Uncle Elmer why he
cheated on his income tax in front of the Internal Revenue man (he did).

They love to do favors for friends. Buy your little Aquarian boy a brand new pair of
boots and he's likely to wear them out the first day-smoothing down the snow to
make it slick so the neighborhood kids can use their sleds.

Expect your February child to have a dream and hold it fast-until he gets another
one. With a girl, it's likely to be a projection of herself as a prima ballerina, with a
pure dedication to her art that would put Pavlova to shame, a thirst to be the first
woman president or a hunger to follow in the footsteps of Madame Curie. With the
boys, it could be an oceanographer, ichthyologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, an
exterminator or a tree surgeon. Normal career choices like nurses, secretaries,
clerks, salesmen, teachers, bankers and brokers are too mundane for the average
Aquarian child's fantasies. He may have to settle for one eventually, but the original
dream will be tucked under his left ear and not forgotten. It's eerie, but Aquarians
can sometimes cause a thing to happen by simply concentrating on it and waiting.

You'll never know quite what to expect from day to day. This is a child who may
not want to stay indoors when it rains. He'll be out with your best sterling silver
table-spoon, digging a drain so the hill in back of the house won't wash away.

Remember the old verse you heard as a child that went, "The bear went over the
mountain-the bear went over the mountain-the bear went over the mountain-to see




what he could see. The other side of the mountain- the other side of the mountain-
the other side of the mountain-was all that he could see." Your Aquarius youngster
will have better luck. He'll find something there. Maybe it will be a pot of gold or
just a new species of woodpecker, but none of his exploratory journeys will ever
result in a dead end or a total loss.

I skipped over the infant stage because these children are never infants. They are
born middle-aged. However, many of them do go through the toddler stage, and
during that precarious period you might be wise to consider buying a seeing-eye
dog. Keep the dog until your little Uranian is at least ten. He may have trouble
navigating the block without an incident. Off on his own private cloud, he'll lope
down the street in a fog, and ram right into a telephone pole or a mailbox. Aquarian
absent-mindedness brings on twisted ankles, broken bones and the wrath of
teachers. You may be torn between pride, when the school reports he or she is a
budding genius-and shame, when you receive a note saying, "Oliver simply won't
pay attention in class. He stares out the window all day and plays with his two-way
wrist watch." Or "Gertrude refuses to concentrate. Instead of studying, she just sits
there and flexes her arches in those silly ballet slippers." A lecture to Oliver and
Gertrude will result in a shrug of bored impatience. What's all the fuss about? He
was trying to figure the effect of the summer solstice on Greenwich Mean Time, and
she was wondering what makes a caterpillar turn into a butterfly. To their minds,
that's perfectly logical. Cheel What a square school. Granted, they are on the right
track. But this may not be the century to prove it.

Teachers often complain that the Aquarian child refuses to explain, step by step,
how he arrived at his remarkable answer to a complicated math problem before she
finished writing it on the blackboard. There's a good, sensible reason. His Uranian
intuition, that works by some kind of unseen radio waves, forced his mind through
those steps so quickly he just can't remember. Almost all Aquarian children were
behind the delivery-room door when memory was passed out. Forgetting their
address is frequent, forgetting their last name is uncomfortably possible, and
forgetting what time to come home is par-for-the-course. Your brilliant-and he most
likely is-Uranus youngster must be taught that his aim should encompass more than
being a human computer. He needs to leam the importance of organizing his
thoughts in logical order. Otherwise, a potential genius, philosopher, engineer,
scientist, doctor, lawyer-gardener or cab driver (the last two if you're lucky) can turn
into an eccentric adult, headed in several directions at once, and end up going
around in interesting, but not very profitable, circles.

Encourage him to participate in physical activity or a harmful inertia can take over
and hell daydream the hours away. It .often takes an emergency to spur Aquarian
children to physical action, though they can have a great love for sports. Mentally,
they're speed demons. But the body may be a bit slower, at least around the house.
They may have an empathy for birds, trees, nature and the seashore. They'll always
prefer their own independent discovery to organized activity. You'll have to watch
for a tendency to say "I can't" to rationalize the urge to avoid responsibility. The
Aquarian child may take the path of least resistance if you let him. Teach him that




he's only fooling himself. Let him make his own decisions, but encourage him to act
on them.

Unspoken tension can deeply disturb him. These young-•ters can almost see into
the souls of others, and hear thoughts which haven't even been audibly expressed,
which can disturb them and leave lasting feelings of unhappiness. Better encourage
tranquility and harmony, concentration and memory, if you don't want an eccentric,
nervous, absent-minded bachelor or spinster with unfulfilled dreams on your hands
in thirty years or so.

Be careful what you say and how you say it with Aquarian youngsters. Suggestions
planted in these fertile, remarkably acute Uranian minds in childhood can take firm
root and form fixed adult opinions. Undue emphasis on clean hands, repeated
warnings, "Don't drink out of my glass, it's dirty," can cause the Aquarian youngster
to grow up with exaggerated fears and carry his own goblet in his pocket when he
goes visiting. Being so accident prone, you can imagine what will happen if he sits
down suddenly with that goblet there. And he does do almost everything suddenly.

Aquarian boys and girls have multitudes of friends. They make at least ten new ones
per day, from the street cleaner to the truant officer and the ex-parachutist who runs
the candy store. He might even bring home a little friend named Rockefeller for
lunch someday, too, but don't let it shake you. You're not raising a social snob. He
won't know him from the dog catcher. He's just another "pal."

Adolescent problems of romance may never bother you. In fact, the Aquarian child
may have to be reminded which sex is which. Few of these youngsters are boy crazy
or girl crazy. Just plain crazy is more of a possibility, especially when they start
wearing those weird clothes and parting their hair in such an odd way. This may be
about the time his hidden love of poetry emerges, which should be encouraged.
Your little Uranian has frogs in his pockets and stars in his eyes, but he's very
special. He's a humanitarian. He loves people. Do you know how rare that is? As
society moves into the Aquarian age, his unprejudiced wisdom is leading us.
Aquarian boys and girls have been chosen by destiny to fulfill the promise of to-
morrow-frogs and stars, pickle sandwiches and all. Just nickname him the
"Twentieth Century Wonder," and let the neighbors guess why.