mo, i want to comment on this page because i loved what you wrote and it reminds me of something important.
brilliant story! thank you for passing it on. wish i had been on the bus. i can well imagine the reaction of the people on board... desperately trying to hold together a sense of decorum and attempting to look out the window, feigning disinterest, but in fact wanting to look right at the man and boy and laugh outrageously (and then possibly turning away to breathe into their own cupped hands before smelling them!)
i received a text message from an eleven year old yesterday... it was 6 words long. a simple question and her name. no faff. no chitchat. no working me up to replying to her. just the question she had.
it was a moment that stopped me mid-slurp (i was in common grounds at the time). a moment that made me smile. a moment that made me really question what my reply would be. her words were simple, direct, unapologetic. i replied by asking the question back to her. to which she replied by asking why i thought she was asking me! it was refreshingly plain. stripped of conversational packaging, undertones, layers of innuendo and all the other filters we learn to see through (since it is we who have introduced them).
this eleven year old is intelligent. and as she contemplates her future, which will take her to places which will stretch her imagination and challenge her intellect, i hope she doesn't lose the intelligence she possesses now: the capacity to speak plainly, to question fearlessly, to ask for help when she feels she needs it, to communicate bluntly and boldly, to risk interrupting the slurps of someone surrounded by books to teach them something about how to live.
