whenever they say akio toyoda i think they are saying that harry potter spell accio. accio toyoda!

right now, today, i know of one little kid who is in hospital. he's 18 months old and he doesn't feel good. i am sure he spends most of his time sleeping and i also know for a fact he's doing some puking, but a couple people have said to me «he must be so confused» and i posit that no, he is not. well, not any more than most 18 months olds. i mean, hell, at 18 months you cannot even talk much. you barely have a rudimentary vocabulary. you cannot name your world. ergo - you have no context. talk about learning something new every day - when you are 18 mos old, your entire day every day is learning learning learning.

so, you are 18 mos old and now you are in hospital. hmm... «well, gee, we used to live in another place and now we live here and the people here are mostly nice but the food is wack and sometimes they poke you with sharp things which hurts but mommy is here and daddy goes to work so that's the same and grandma is here every single day so that's a bonus and they let me watch whatever i want on teevee but now i am going to take a nap.»

seriously, what difference does the kid know? this makes it very, very important for the parents to be as happy as possible and as positive as possible b/c the kid is going to take his cue from them. if he has any context at all, they are it, so if he is going to be confused at all, it would be on account of their weirdness.

it's not like he's going to be all «why me, lord?!» because for all he knows, everyone is puking and getting poked with needles. he doesn't know he's being singled out and he doesn't really know there's anything different about him. i mean, he doesn't have that ability to view himself from another perspective.

one thing they do at hospital is have some volunteer come around and take the kids' pictures. my old man was like - "who the hell wants their picture taken in hospital?" and i was like - "kids. duh." kids love to have their pix taken. they have no idea they are looking a bit wack. they are like - wooowooo, pictures! and the person taking the pic says SMILE and the kid SMILES and the parents SMILE and everyone SMILES and everyone does something simple and normal and happy.

sometimes, a wee bit of happy goes a long, long way.