Through the Arch Window

Small Thing was sitting in the back seat of The Antiquer's car. She tossed over a rather uninteresting looking cartoon for me to read to her from her odious Bindi Irwin magazine. Reading stories to kids is one of my least-favourite past-times, and reading a comic strip the dreariest part of it all. Trying to dodge the awful task, I began to summarise the action in the first few panels.

"Well, excuse me," interrupted a Small Voice from behind me, "I did say you had to read it."

Such precision! Her father wants her to become a surgeon, but I think such a nit-picking mind is reserved a special place in the seventh circle of professional hell: the law.

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I was sitting on the verandah at k.'s house when that mop-topped youngster t. came out and announced that he was going to tell me a story, a story about a green ball that rolled down a green hill wrapped in a purple blanket.

"Hit me," I said. [Which, you may be surprised to learn, was my invitation for him to tell the tale and not a request to have punches rained upon my person.]

"Once upon a time there was a green ball and it rolled down a green hill and it was wrapped in a purple blanket."

So, you think to yourself, the little chap isn't quite four - what more can you expect? But wait, there's a twist:

"When it got to the bottom it bumped into a rock and rolled back up the hill."

What this kid doesn't know about narrative suspense and story arcs isn't worth learning.