A recent scene at my neighborhood pool: It’s closing time and the lifeguards are rolling the tarp off its big spool and laying it out across the water. A 3- or 4-year-old boy bolts away from his mother at the gate leading outside and squats down poolside, gazing intently as the tarp unfurls. His mother calls to him, “O.K., let’s go!”
All he does in response is reach his hand out so he can touch the tarp as it moves under his fingers. His mother may as well be a million miles away.
I am smiling to myself at the whole scene, don’t even realize my smile shows until I approach the gate and Mom says to me, smiling herself now, “It’s so interesting!”
“Of course it is!” I respond. “And it’s so interesting that it’s interesting to him!”
She vigorously assents to this and we both laugh, marveling at the insatiable, seemingly undiscriminating curiosity of the young.
But re...
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