The young mind is a wonder to behold. One young chap, to whom I’m closely related, believes my iPad has only one thing on it: a video of some opera singer performing the Queen of the Night aria. When he sees the device in my hand, he requests the tune. I duly comply. His parents are OK with that, but god knows what happens when he discovers you can also watch Bluey on the thing or, more to the point, Ms Rachel.
Talking of Bluey, another grandchild is surprised that Bluey is available on the TV set at our place. He assumes, it seems, that the characters are imprisoned in the TV that resides in his living room, just waiting to be summoned to perform their tricks. How they can be inside his TV first thing this morning and yet inside ours, three suburbs away, by the time he arrives is something he finds quite impossible to understand.
How does Bluey get in the TV? Effed if I know, kid.Credit: ABC
I try to explain the basics of film and television, in both broadcast and streaming modes, but discover after two sentences that I don’t understand it myself. “It’s, um, radio waves, which are all around us, and digital data. Yes, digital data.” I wave my arm airily, as if that explains it.
He looks unconvinced by my explanation and, frankly, so am I. Maybe he’s right, and the characters do just live inside the TV.
Children are keen to understand the world. It’s a lovely thing. The problem is that each “why” question reveals your own ignorance. “Why is the sky blue?” “What do ants eat?” “Why do dogs wag their tails?” I find I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. Do you?
More questions fly in by the minute. “Why do stars twinkle?” “Why can’t Clancy talk?” “Why are giraffes so tall?”
Oh, bliss. I know the answer to that last one. “Giraffes are tall so they can eat the new leaves off the top of the tall trees.” I lean back beaming, as if I’m David Bloody Attenborough.
It’s not a good score, though, one right from six questions. If this were the Good Weekend quiz I’d be morose for a week. I also assume this same child, in a year or two, will work himself up to the doozy: “If the planet really is spinning, then why don’t we all fall off?”
Oh, I know the answer is gravity, but how does that work? “Well, it’s like we’ve got magnets in our shoes! And so have all the cars. And all the giraffes. Plus, of course, all the sandwiches, they have magnets in them too, otherwise they’d just spin off into space …” God knows what I studied at school for all those years because this is the best I can do.
