ignorance is bliss...and sometimes desirable

Major life events are still being recorded by my grandson in his little diary. However when I asked him if he had entered the news that Chelsea where the Champions of Europe he replied 'no, I'm only writing the important stuff'. This confused me as he had felt the fact they reached the finals as important and recorded that event in his diary but I thought no more about until my daughter told me of a conversation she had had with him.

'Mum, will I die when I filled up all the pages of my diary?' he asked her.

'What? No, of course not' said my daughter.

'What happens then? When I've filled it up? said my grandson.

'I'll buy you a new one'. my daughter told him.

So it would seem that he thought when he filled in the last page of his diary that would be the end of his life so he had started rationing what he wrote in it. But wouldn't it be wonderful if at the end of your life you could just buy a new one? Of course if you were very rich you could buy a good successful life, one in which you had brains, beauty and robust good health. If you were poor and could only afford the life of an unhappy, unloved ugly old crone you are hardly going to make the purchase are you? Or are you? Is life that desirable? In that case lets say you can buy the new life with good deeds. The more good deeds you have done the better life you could buy. If you had been a selfish cruel person all you would be able to afford is the life of the ugly old crone. Eventually the world would be filled with beautiful, clever and healthy people. Oh dear, that sounds like religion with a dash of eugenics....moving on.

Last weekend we spend a wonderful day at a 'Make Merry' event on a local common where
we enjoyed a variety of live music, dance and exotic food. A couple of days later we were driving past the common (one of several where I live) and I pointed it out to my grandson saying 'That's the common where we were making merry the other day' and he asked me why it was called a 'common'? I, incorrectly it turns out, told him that common land belongs to everyone. This is apparently a misapprehension that has persisted since at least Tudor times, when land would have been used for communal farming and domestic practises. Now it means Common land is a piece of land in private ownership, where other people have certain traditional rights to use it in specified ways, such as being allowed to graze their livestock or gather firewood. And in 2012 have festivals, funfairs, circus', football practise, kite flying, dog walking and general merry making it would seem. Anyway getting back to my wrong answer to his question - that a common belongs to everyone - he asked why the Earth isn't called the Earth Common as the Earth belongs to everyone. Now this is were I am blissful I was ignorant of the facts. If I'd know I was wrong it would have been oh so easy to explain why some people own parts of the Earth and why some counties wage wars in order to own parts of the world but I didn't know I was wrong and said that we just called it Earth for short.

Driving him home the other day I, slightly frustrated at my grandsons occasional inconsiderate behaviour, said to him 'you are a bit of a user your know'. 'Yep - lots of people have told me that' he replied nonchalantly.

Oh to be 6 years old and full of curiosity and self worth and having the ugly truth hidden from you.