A Child's Mind
Just a little while ago my youngest grandson left. He is six and gave me a new understanding of what it means to become outdated. He asked to use my computer for a while, especially the touch screen. In two minutes flat he had found a bunch of my pictures, made a colage, colored them with different colors, framed them with different frames and chose a number of different backgrounds for them. Needless to say, I did not even know that I had that capability to do such things with my fingers. Then, as if the other was not enough to expose my computer ignorance, he found a gamebox and amused himself, defeating me at all of them. He was a very happy camper when his mother picked him up. His parting shot to me was. "I never thought that I could teach an adult about their own computer!" So, there you go!
To me, nothing is so intriguing as the mind of a child. Their way of thinking, and expressing themselves about the world as they peceive it, is as varied, fresh and bubbling like a mountain spring. You can see clear to the bottom of their minds and that which is hidden from your vision will be brought to you by bursts, or gushes of excited exclamations. "Did you know?" is one of their most often used exclamations, which is followed by explanations that can be stingingly precise or intriguingly convoluted.
Good, healthy little minds love the truth to the point of embarrassment. They conceal nothing and if you want a secret kept--don't tell them because they can only keep it as long as there is no one new to tell it to. They comment on their world and the people in it without fear and shame. Sometimes that leads to very dicy situations. I remember sitting in a small, nice restaurant in New Jersey, New Shrewsberry--someplace at the oceanside--with my children two and a half and four. That was many years ago. The shore was sometimes frequented by biker gangs and everyone behaved circumspectly when they were present, as they were prone to be easily insulted, reacting violently. The restaurant was half filled with a lunch crowd, nice people all, when suddenly about twenty four, or more, bikers came in. They noisily found seats, upon which they hung out their bodies and yelled for the waitresses. From the moment they had entered, silence had become deafening. People looked at their food and nothing else. Then came a moment when even the bikers did not speak. Into this stillness my two-and a-half-year-old boy, who had been watching every person and every move those persons made, asked at the top of his voice, "Mama, that man over there, the one with big, big beard, is that Jesus Christ?" The room became even stiller, if that was possible. In a carefully controlled voice, trying to sound as nutral as as I could, I said, "No, dear, the gentleman is not Jesus Christ." I envisioned having to defend my child against a biker. Wherupon my four-year-old daughter piped up in her loudest voice, "Don't be silly. He can't be Jesus because he has girl friend." More silence. But not for long, because the so discussed bearded man broke into a laughing roar. He laughed so hard tears streamed down his cheeks. "Damn," he shouted, "me being Jesus. That's rich!" His friends laughed as uproariously as he did; the rest of the people in the place laughed--with great relief, I laughed, the kids laughed. And then my daughter said ringingly, "Mom the man who is not Jesus, just said a curse word." I decided it was time that we left. No need to keep pressing our luck.
