CoachA human life passes through stages:
- the baby (roughly the first two years): fastest growth of all, first teeth, first steps, first words;
- the child: steady growth, baby teeth traded for adult teeth, learning of every kind;
- the adolescent: a new burst of fast growth, and the body changing from a child’s into an adult’s;
- the adult: growth in height over; adults can become parents;
- old age: hair whitens, skin wrinkles, strength slowly declines — the natural last stage of the cycle.
Examples
Example 15.2 (Reading the sofa)
On the family sofa: the baby (stage 1), the gap-toothed schoolchild (stage 2 — the changeover of Chapter 12 in full swing), the sixteen-year-old cousin (stage 3, mid-burst), the parents (stage 4), Grandma (stage 5). Five stages, one family.
Example 15.5 (Reading the chart)
On the chart, the line climbs about in the very first year — and only about a year through childhood. The two steep parts are the two bursts of Remark 15.3; the flat end says the adult has stopped growing taller.
Example 15.8 (How fast, how slow)
The speeds differ enormously. A fly is adult in weeks; a cat in about a year; a human in nearly twenty years; an oak takes several tens of years before its first acorns. Slow or fast, the order of the stages never changes.