Catherine, 5, was single-mindedly wrassling the crayons around with the coloring books. She lifted her head and posed this one to Auntie Jan:
“Why is the sky blue?”
Never tell a lie to a kid. Auntie Jan replied, “I don’t know.”
Catherine to the rescue: “It’s because all the other colors were taken.”
Thanks to my trusted personal advisor for this anecdote—she also noted that an essential definition of imagination is knowing just enough real fact to make up the rest of it to suit the moment, and then to re-invent the same thing in a new moment.
O frabjous day!
I imagine the surround-sound thrill of saying the next thing that comes into my head without any suspicion that I might be wrong…..
p.s. NASA says the sky is blue because:
“Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth's atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.”
Catherine can tackle that alternative reality when she gets a bit older….
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