Millie and the blind man, Amber and books

Millie’s on my shoulders and we’re walking from the station to school.  A blind man with a white stick is walking towards us heading for the station.

MILLIE: Why is that man waving a stick?

ME: It’s to help him see.

(then has visions of Millie imagining the man somehow using a stick with eyes in it and starts again)

He can’t see so he uses a stick to sort of feel his way along.  It stops him bumping into things and hurting himself.

MILLIE: Why can’t he see?

ME: I don’t know why, but he’s blind, which means he can’t see – or can’t see very well.  Imagine if you had your eyes closed and could never open them – that’s what being blind is like.

MILLIE: But why is he waving that stick?

ME: I told you, it’s to stop him bumping into things and huting himself.  It’s very clever.

MILLIE: What is he doing with it?

ME: Um, well, he waves it in front of him so he can feel if there’s anything in the way.

MILLIE: Why?

ME: Why what?

MILLIE: Why can’t he see?

ME: I don’t know.  Some people just are blind.  I wouldn’t like to be blind, would you?

MILLIE: How does he cross the road if he can’t see?

ME: Well, I expect he uses the traffic lights to tell him when to cross.  That’s why traffic lights make a noise when it’s safe to cross.

MILLIE: What?

ME: Traffic lights make a noise so blind people know when it’s safe to cross, the same as they have lights to tell deaf people – who can’t hear – when it’s safe to cross.

MILLIE: What if it’s not working?  Some of them don’t make a noise.

ME: Then he’ll have to ask someone to help him.

MILLIE: Who?

ME: Sigh.

It’s sometimes hard to understand how children see the world and to adjust your explanation accordingly.  Things you take so utterly for granted that you don’t even think about them can mystify a child.

Which reminds me of a slightly similar story The Lovely Melanie told me about Amber and her favourite bedtime story at the moment.  Called something like Monster In My Bedroom, it’s about a little bear who continually sees “monsters” in his bedroom when the lights are switched off, only to find – when the lights are switched back on – that they’re just shadows of his toys.

Amber loves this book – loves it!

But apparently she’s also quite frightened of the “monsters” in it (so much so that the Lovely Melanie almost regretted reading it to her the first time).  And she gets frightened every time it’s read to her – she has yet to realise that stories in books are fixed and immutable, that at no point is the story going to change and the monsters turn out to be real.

The Lovely Melanie was a bit dismissive of this because obviously books don’t change – Heathcliff and Cathy don’t suddenly get to live happily ever after, Hamlet doesn’t one day pull himself together and go on to rule Denamrk – it just doesn’t happen.

Obviously.

But to Amber books are a new and magical medium, she doesn’t yet understand that we’re reading the words set irreversibly on the page.  If I had to guess I’d say she imagines we have some mysterious “story sense” by which we’re told what happens – that’s the kind of thing I might have thought when I was little.

To Amber we’re literally making the story anew every single time we read the book.

It’s a fascinating idea, and if I didn’t have to work for a living I’d love to explore the idea a bit further…