We were at a mini-festival and the child won one of those expanding plastic ball-things.
After my mind had stopped complaining about how much plastic tat there was in the world, and after the kids had moved on to something else, us grown-ups started playing ‘catch’ with it. They’re pretty cool – a clever design that seems to visibly breathe, as it collapses and expands.
Then a random little toddler came past with his family and his eyes practically left his head. We gave it to him to play with (if I hadn’t been certain of nuclear meltdown from my daughter, I’d have let him keep it 😂) and it’s fair to say, he was absolutely mesmerised.
It seemed clear that he’d never experienced anything remotely like this in his entire short life and all of us—our gang; his gang—watched with big smiles on our faces as he practically swam in the experience; new neural pathways opening up somewhere inside his head and a look dawning on his happy little face that said, “This is it. Life is going to be brilliant!”
😮🤯
After he’d gone (casting looks over his shoulder the entire way), it was funny to observe that each of us, at some point or another, picked the ball up again and had a proper look at it.