A dinosaur in Singapore

Two days ago, Fintan, three, was at the pool with us. He had been in the water for some time, and had come out to talk to us - and ready himself for departure.

Suddenly he looked down at the floor and saw some smudged watermarks. He peered closely then looked up, sure of his find: "Dinosaur footprints!" he declaimed, of the marks on the ground, no doubt imagining the critter having just run around the corner. He looked again, and noting their small size said: "Baby dinosaurs!"

Fintan's world is an imaginative one - and one that I like, thereby. He doesn't just live in Singapore - he lives near the "jungle" - where anything can happen, and many a thing does live. His world is more alive than the real world, more filled with possibility - and it is wonderful to see it. I hope that it is ever that way and that he doesn't become like most adults who exclude the possibility of the fantastic from their minds with dull automaticity. I would like to see him continue on this imaginative path and become a creative adult one day, like many of his relatives. It would, I think, suit him.

I didn't cast doubt, therefore, on his assessment that a baby dinosaur had left those watery footprints, for his view was a better, more interesting one than the truth. His view was one that entertained a possibility that others might not. His view was one that allowed him to imagine a world that was not, but which would be more interesting than the one in which we live.

Of course, there was another reason why he might think of those somewhat rounded half dried footprints as dinosaurian - for long ago, as I have explained in a previous post, he saw a "baby dinosaur" one day - actually a large lizard. This peopled his world with the possibility that dinosaurs might be just around the corner. He is not at fault for this view - for I introduced the lizard to him as a "baby dinosaur" - for it made perfect a "dinosaur hunt" one day.

Many children believe in fairies and ghosts and the like. I have a son who believes in dinosaurs. Well, at least there are lizards, today - which look awfully like them - and at least they did actually live - one day.