Doodling with a three year old

Yesterday I encountered my first three year old since I myself was a three year old.

I found him sitting at my dining room table, wearing a homemade cardigan with tiny plastic monkeys for buttons, surrounded by what I can only describe as space fruit, by which I mean, lemons and apples that had been given pipe cleaner antenna.

"Listen," he told me, holding up an iridescent piece of material that was, of course, a phone receiver with a curly orange pipe cleaner jutting out of it (the phone cable, naturally). He whispered something resembling beatboxing into it and held it up for me to put my ear to.

"No! really?" I gasped upon receiving his 'recorded' message, he chuckled at my reaction, pleased his transmission has achieved such a response.

I invited myself to join Ollie and his Dad at the table. There was a long roll of white wallpaper sellotaped to the table top that the pair had been doodling on. Ollie communicated something to his Dad that I didn't quite catch. His Dad reached over the table and drew a square with the word 'save' in the middle for him. Ollie proceeded to press it at regular intervals whenever he found a moment of pause in his creative flow. I gathered he had a drawing app and was used to clicking a save button to make sure he didn't lose any of his masterpieces

I quickly made the mistake of using the phrase "I'm bringing the lemon to life," when Ollie asked what I was making, a more accurate statement would have been "I'm drawing a lemon with a happy little face so it seems more real." I was completely unprepared for what happened next, as I said at the start I have very little experience of being around three year olds.

Ollie looked at my drawing with his young shining eyes and he said "how are you going to do that?"

I realised that the sweet boy next to me had accepted that I had apparent powers over paper and life and now he was waiting for me to bring my drawing into his reality. I've never encountered such absolute trust. I have younger cousins but not so much younger that they didn't regard any fantasy game with some level of conspiracy and suspension of disbelief.

I suddenly understood that Ollie lives in a world where magic is completely viable and maybe in the course of your day you'll run into someone who can turn something they've drawn into an actual real thing.

"You have to turn your back to make it work." I told him.

Thankfully, oil pastel works on lemon, I quickly borrowed a space lemon and replicated the smile and rosy cheeks from my picture on its waxy surface. By the time Ollie turned around I was pretending to expel a great deal of effort, pulling the real lemon out of the paper from my artwork.

I don't think anyone's ever regarded me with a look of such amazement. He stood up on the bench and turned the lemon over in his hands again and again "wow!" he said, under his breath.