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Shorts
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| From out of the mouths of babes | |
| By Snodlander | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 15 December 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thomas looked up at me with the serious expression seen only on politicians at grave national moments and four-year-olds. It was odd. Such a serious little boy. He must get that from his mother. It certainly wasn’t from my side of the family. “Hello, Granddad.” “Hello, Squirt.” He continued to stare at me thoughtfully. “Granddad, why do you call me ‘Squirt’? My name is Thomas.” “It’s my special name for you, because you’re very special to me.” He nodded, mulling it over. “But my name is Thomas” he continued, eventually. “Yeeees” I said, hesitantly. I had been on the receiving end of his relentless logic before, and knew that this could last all day. “Would you like me to call you ‘Thomas’ instead?” He nodded firmly, but kept up his piercing stare. Maybe he would be a policeman when he grew up. His stare emptied the space between him and you, until you felt compelled to fill the gap. “What have you been up to today?” “I’ve been to Sunday School.” Gosh. Sunday School. Did such institutions still exist? Perhaps there was hope for civilisation after all. “What did you learn about?” “Noah’s ark. Do you know what a Noah’s ark is, Granddad?” “Yes, it’s a boat for all the animals.” “It’s a big boat for all the animals like giraffes and nelephants and bears” he continued, ignoring my answer. “’Cos it rained and rained and the water comed up.” And he mimed the rain falling and the flood rising, probably from a song they had sung there. The Stare again. It ranked a capital letter. It wasn’t any old stare. It was unique, peculiar to the earnest young boy staring up at me. A proper Stare with a proper noun all to itself. The Stare: coming to a cinema near you. At length he took a deep breath, preparatory to a vocalisation of all those deep thoughts that had been churning behind that serious face. “Were you in the Noah’s ark, Granddad?” In spite of myself, a chuckle escaped from me. When had I grown so old? I hadn’t noticed, not even when I became a grandparent. “No, Squ… Thomas. I wasn’t in the ark.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “So how come you didn’t drown?” This time it was a guffaw. From anyone else it would have been an outrageously cheeky remark, but Thomas was genuine. I winked at him. “I’m a very good swimmer.” He nodded again, fitting another piece into the jigsaw of the world in his mind. “Would hippos go on the Noah’s ark, ‘cos they’re good swimmers too?” “A good point. Perhaps they just swam when they wanted to, but Noah let them sleep on the ark when they got tired.” He frowned. I had obviously tried to force a piece of the jigsaw into a hole where it did not fit. “No, ‘cos if he opened the door to let the hippos on, the boat would sink, ‘cos all the water would get in.” Of course. Stupid me. Fancy me not thinking of that. “Well, you know he had birds on there as well?” My inquisitor nodded. “Well, that means he must have had two types of birds called ‘cranes’. They’re like storks. Do you know what a stork looks like?” He thought for a moment, then nodded. We had watched Dumbo together countless times. “Well, I expect that when the hippos got tired, Noah used the cranes to lift them on board. Cranes, get it? Cranes, like building cranes.” And despite myself I found myself miming a crane in order to impress this four-year-old with my wit and repartee. Not even a smile. He looked at me solemnly. “You’re just being silly” he said, and walked off to find more sensible company.
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