sight isn’t always necessary

First, I must start with a quote from “The Little Prince”, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  Ravneet gave the book to Connor for his birthday, and it’s taken some time to finally get some use out of it.  Connor wants us to read to him, or actually he used to want us to tell him a story, while he falls asleep at night.  I got very tired of coming up with stories, because it’s actually very difficult to come up with a cohesive plotline at a moments notice.  So, I decided to start reading longer stories, ones without pictures (pictures inevitably need to be looked at by Connor, so he’ll pop his head up over and over again, pretending to adjust himself, just to see the pictures.)  Pictures are sometimes a distraction anyway, they take away from our imaginations and force us to see what an illustrator wants us to see, rather than what we want to see behind our eyeballs.

So tonight I read “The Little Price”, which I have been reading for the past week or so, and Connor fell asleep within minutes.  That wasn’t enough to really get anything out of the story, so I stood by his bed for an extra 15 minutes or so, just reading the book silently to myself while Connor slept in front of me.  I ran across this little chapter, or I guess they’re chapters but mostly it’s just separation for the little sections of story; this one was in the middle of a page, short enough to take up about 3 inches of printed space.

“Good morning,” said the little prince.

“Good morning,” said the merchant.

This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst.  You need ony swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink.

“Why are you selling those?” asked the little prince.

“Because they save a tremendous amount of time,” said the merchant.  “Computations have been made by experts.  With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week.”

“And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?”

“Anything you like…”

“As for me,” said the little prince to himself, “if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”