By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO, April 2– “Count to three, and I’ll make the magic happen.”
Grandson Sky, aged 4, dutifully counted. “One-two-three.”
The television screen jumped to life, and an episode began of “The Land Before Time,” perhaps Sky’s most favorite show. It’s about dinosaur youngsters and their adventures.
This one, telling the story of the migration of the “Long necks” – brontosauruses – started with the main character, “Little Foot” experiencing a “sleep story” (dream) about following the “yellow circle in the sky” (the sun).
Sky confided that sometimes he has sleep stories, not all of them good. For example, he said, the last time he slept over at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s he had one about a “big, green, scary monster.”
“When you woke up, was the monster there?”
“No,” he said.
I told him that he had quite an imagination, prompting him to ask what that word meant.
I paused the video, and suggested to him: “Close your eyes and picture a house.”
His eyes closed.
“Can you see a house?”
He nodded his head.
“Does it have a roof?”
“Yes” he smiled.
“Windows?”
“Yes”
“A door?”
“Yes.”
You see it inside of your head?
“Yes”
“But, is a house really inside your head?
“No”
“So you imagined it. You used your imagination!”
I touched the “play button” and the video resumed.
“Grandpa, how did you make the video go?”
“Do you see this button with the big arrow on it? That’s the one for ‘play.’”
“And how did you get it to stop?”
“This button right next to it – it’s the pause button.”
“Can I try?”
I handed him the remote control.
The picture on the screen paused. Then it started again. Once again it paused. Then it started again, It seemed as if the Big Foots would never reach their destination.
“Grandpa, what’s this button?”
“Button—which button? Wait!”
The screen went blank.
“What happened grandpa?”
“You pressed something that made the video start all over.”
“That’s okay,” he reassured me. “I wanted to go color anyway.”
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Harrison is editor and publisher of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com