“When a hotel plate has been washed 24 times in a row without being dirty, the old hopscotch an comes and picks it up.”
The children in the school’s auditorium look interested in the lecturer. A boy puts up his hand.
“It’s like at home. We have a wireless router that runs both the cell phones and the computers.”
“It’s not the same.”
“OK.”
A more sensible boy puts up his hand.
“What if it’s just been dusty?”
“Is dust dirty?” asks a third child.
I, the journalist from The Other Newspaper wonder why the children do not ask about the two most mysterious problems namely who the old hopscotch man may be and how he can keep track of all the hotel plates in the world, but I realize that they know well that what is told is fantasy. There is something absolutely touching about the fact that all the children have at least as much imagination as the speaker. Yes. Children and adults have just as much imagination.
“What nonsense.”
What!? How do you know what I’m thinking? I notice a school teacher standing and reading my thoughts and reading the article before it is written.
“Hehe.”
The lecturer has been marking time with a very standard tale of two mosquitoes in love sitting on the edge of a plate. Outside, an excavator hums.
