children are strange creatures...

on my way back to work yesterday (after having spent a few hours at a cafe, reading articles for my essay) i met a woman and a child, and i couldn't help but noticing that the woman was speaking in a language i though i'd never heard before. so i slowed down my steps to see if i could hear anything i would recognise in this funny language, and after a while a realised she was speaking swedish! in a really funny "grown-up-language-used-in order-to-talk-to-children" she was telling him (?) that he had eaten his banana. i found this stupid in many ways; * the child probably found out that there was "no banana" by himself, and if he didn't * her telling him probably didn't help much. if a grown up person (me) who has listened to swedish all her life had great difficulties in understanding what the woman said, i can only imagine how difficult it must have been for the little child to figure out what she was talking about... hopefully he didn't mind it very much. he probably liked the woman, and thought she was cute when she was making those weird strange noices.

as i continued walking after this encounter i kept thinking about this little boy. in some way he will (probably) soon be able to learn swedish, despite the help of this woman. and in a few years that banana smeard little thing will be a real person. now he is just a cute and soft little thing that women like to talk to in a funny way, but soon he might be a doctor or a murderer or a mecanic... and if he still has banana all over himself 15 years from now people will find him disgusting, but now they find him sweet. it's weird how people change... the very old and crooked little lady in our house has probably been a smeary little baby too, once upon a time.  ¶ 1:36 PM