My 7-year-old charge and I had the exquisite delight of a 4-hour marathon at the creative children's museum today. Returning home, we spent a portion of the drive in that contented sort of quiet that follows such a happy expenditure of energy. Revealing his own train of silent thought, T interrupted the reverie to note that he had just spotted "one of those spiny-backed dinosaurs--but without a head--made out of clouds." I looked up through the open car top long enough to affirm his assertion, prompting a few other mentions of cloud creatures. He then launched a new series for our conversation: a series of questions that I dutifully responded to after considerable contemplation for each . . .
"What would you do if it started raining . . .
houses? [I would click my heels and say 'there's no place like home']
street signs? [I would get even more lost than is my general tendency]
cars? [I would drive until I felt almost as classy as I currently do in my temporary ride--a convertible VW]
asteroids? [I would dig a hole and burrow for cover]
kittens? [I would adopt 20]
puppies? [I would adopt 1, and name it Kiwi Jr]
. . . And so on. All in all, I decided that T's inner thought life at the time was
considerably more interesting than my own, which was pulled aways from ponderings as
to what I could quickly prepare as a passably edible dinner for us. Yes, I think children have infinitely more intriguing thought lives than those of us on the more old and crotchety end of life :-)
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