Opinion | Columnists
Impishly they cast their spell
Out of the mouths of babes ... have we adults found sources of infinite amusement. There is rarely anything that can surpass the originality of a child's oversight. Not for him the careful drafting, editing and proofing of a paragraph.
- By Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:39 December 10, 2008
Out of the mouths of babes ... have we adults found sources of infinite amusement. There is rarely anything that can surpass the originality of a child's oversight. Not for him the careful drafting, editing and proofing of a paragraph.
Often there is no wide ranging vocabulary to call upon, so he tells it like it is. Or like he thinks it should be. Over the years I have, especially in my earlier incarnation as a teacher in India, collected stacks of such "gloriously unplanned" instances, sometimes when carelessness was the architect of the error, or on other occasions when everything simply got "lost in the translation", or defeated by a foreign accent.
In the mid-80s, one of my classes of 30-odd pupils was divided into smaller groups and each was tasked with making a poster promoting any one leading international city. No matter how hard I try I cannot remember what five out of the six teams created. But the sixth group gave me this headline, artistically done in silver poster paint, in horseshoe shape, right above a large pasted picture of the Eiffel Tower: 'Getting Married? Honeymoon in Pairs.'
It is odd how we remember something clearly even two decades later simply because it contained "an interesting" error. We also had a young boy who wrote to his parents every week - as did all those in the hostel, since it was a boarding institution - his letters beginning the same set way: "My dear mum and dad, Who are you? I am fine....." And then, horror of horrors, there was the advent of the teachers from abroad, on some exchange programme, although I personally didn't know of any of us who went over from India to, say, England, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand.
These teachers spent time hopping in and out of various classrooms, baffling the children with both their extravagantly affable natures and their accents. Discipline levels plunged and communication often got lost somewhere in the crossed wires of dialogue and dialect.
Here's an instance of both the mistranslated and the misheard. The eight-year-old had been taking down a rather prosaic passage dictated by a young "Miss" from overseas.
But this is how the young ears heard and transcribed it: "Jim went to visit his uncle. It was getting very light. Outside, darkness was falling. And under the streetlamp, all alone stood his older brother Glen, wetting and wetting."
X'Mas oversights
Another youngster, probably seven years old, who'd fallen under the spell of a South African visiting teacher wrote in his composition notebook as one year drew to an end: "This Christmas, my mum and dad and all of us will be having a huge potty."
And, of course, as 2008 dwindles its way to an extinguishment, if that can be called a word, there is no better way to close than by citing a few X'Mas oversights. "Dear Satan," wrote one little toddler, "I am a good boy and I want a teddy bare."
"Dear Satan," wrote toddler number two, who'd obviously copied from toddler number one but thereafter showed shrewd early promise of a career as an editor, specialising in compression of thought: "I want a bare." "Dear Santa," wrote a third, a girl, very correctly, "Send me a rain dear. I want a rain dear very much." She, as it happened, hailed from a state that was experiencing severe drought.
May they - the little children - continue to be as original and expressive.
May the educational systems they come through never make them self-conscious, or in any way dent their confidence and corrode their spontaneity.
A lot of the young pupils of the time I write about have gone on to be highly successful individuals and, doubtless, considerate, caring parents themselves.
Nudge them in the right direction - but discreetly... That should be the watchword.
For the rest, let children be children. Too often we want them all to be little Shakespeares.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
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