If the World Disappears When I Close My Eyes
Two-year-old Jonathan put a blanket over his head.
"Where did Jonathan go?" His parents pretended to look for him. "Where is he?"
Jonathan giggled under his blanket. He had played this game before.
A couple months earlier, he had played the game the other way. He had "discovered" that when he closed his eyes, the world disappeared. It had frightened him at first. He would blink quickly, not wanting, I reckon, to risk losing the world forever, but as he became more confident that the world would return, he took to closing his eyes for minutes at a time. "Everything is gone," he would say, at first with awe, but then matter-of-factually. This hiding under a blanket was a new game for him, an extension of the old one: if the world disappears when I close my eyes, maybe I can disappear as well.
As adults we find his mistaken understanding to be cute, one CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: If the World Disappears When I Close My Eyes
