Fish, trees and metaphors

There’s a quote, attributed to Einstein, that comes up a lot in autistic communities: “if you judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life thinking it’s stupid”.

Which is something I completely agree with, except, well I keep thinking of this:

For those who can’t watch it, that’s a video of a fish climbing a rope.

It’s not that I don’t understand non literal statements – hell, I have an honours degree in English Lit and you don’t get one of those without being able to spot a metaphor. It’s just that my mind goes in all kinds of literal and non-literal and nitpicky directions all at once. And sometimes there are some pretty cool things along the way 🙂