“There’s not enough hippies to save our lives!”
Who do you think stated this? A stereotypical stoner on a night out? An elderly person desperately trying to cling onto their youth as a free spirited hippy?
This was actually the bewildered statement of a 10 year old traveller and she and her family were evicted from Dale Farm at the end of last year which was aired on Big Fat Gypsy Weddings last week. She was referring to the few activists trying to prevent the inevitable eviction of all the travellers.
What stood out for me the most while watching this was the way that the situation had been viewed by the 10 year old. She genuinely believed that she was accurate in thinking that the only people who would be able to save her would be hoards of hippies.
It is common knowledge that children often view situations in a completely different way to what the reality is – perhaps this is through innocence or ignorance, or perhaps they have the ability to shield themselves from the harsh realities of existence, but as they grow up, through necessity, they lose this ability. Whatever the reason, adults have always found this amusing and even created programmes such as Kid’s say the funniest things as a form of entertainment.
I remember being told as a child that water is colourless – which I thought meant that it is invisible and we must only be able to see it in bottles because the bottles must be coloured. One day my mother asked me if it was raining outside and I jumped up excitedly shouting “I’ll check, I’ll check because I am the only person who can see it!”
My family began to laugh and my mother asked me what I meant. I explained that, even though water is invisible, that I had the special ability to see the rain so I knew I would be able to check if it was raining or not for her because no one else would be able to. This sent my family into hysterics and I had no idea why. Once they had stopped laughing it was explained to me that everyone could see the rain and I didn’t have any special powers. This baffled me as I had always thought that people asked if it was raining because they didn’t have the ability to see it for themselves because it was invisible. But I was grateful that I had been told the truth before I made the mistake again.
There have been countless other innocent misunderstanding and mistakes made throughout my childhood. I remember my sister riding around on her bike with stabilisers on singing “Stabilise, stabilise, ah ah ah ahhh stabiliiiisssssseeeeee” after thinking the Bee Gees’ song Stayin’ Alive was a song about bicycle stabilisers.
These all seem like harmless mistakes, but should we take amusement from children’s mistakes and move on or should we be explaining to children what the truth actually is? At what point does innocence turn into ignorance?
I think it is a necessity, but a great shame, that we have to point out children’s mistakes. I think that the world would be a much happier place if we all had the innocent outlook on life that children have.
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