“Venus iz hot.
Mars iz red.
Saturn iz rubbish.”
The shocking and abusive statement against a planet which, as far as I could see, had done the boy no harm, surprised me. I looked at the quiet, mild mannered five-year-old and inquired,
“What do you mean Michael?”
Being a very reserved and silent boy, he merely looked at me and grinned. I let out a laugh and handed the book back to him, realising that perhaps I would never know what he meant. Did he mean that Saturn was made of rubbish? Or that Saturn is a rubbish name for a planet? Or maybe he couldn’t remember exactly what adjective should be attributed to Saturn (who does?) and so used the closest adjective that came to mind, “rubbish”. Or maybe he just didn’t care and was trying to be funny. As he walked away with a smile, I wondered what else he had tucked away behind that sweet, innocent face. I realised that even a silent five-year-old with a misspelt (is that how you spell misspelt?) three-word sentence, cannot be limited in the impact they have on people to make them smile, laugh, think.
