We were walking home from nursery this evening when we were overtaken by an older child on a scooter. Alex watched him with evident admiration, then turned to me and said,<\/p>\n
“‘Cooter. Po ‘cooter.”<\/p>\n
I agreed that it was a scooter, and that Po had a scooter.<\/p>\n
“Te’tubbies ‘cooter. Po ‘cooter.”<\/p>\n
I agreed that there was a scooter on the Teletubbies, and that it was Po’s scooter.<\/p>\n
Then the conversation took a turn I hadn’t expected. Talking of Teletubbies , was the unstated introduction to his next comment: “Nana baw.”<\/p>\n
“Yes, I said, LaaLaa has a ball.”<\/p>\n
“Tinky bag. Dipsy hat!” finished the boy triumphantly, having listed all the Tubbies’ favourite things.<\/p>\n
“What color is Po?” I asked, trying to establish how visual his memories of the Teletubbies are.<\/p>\n
He answered promptly, “Red.”<\/p>\n
“What color is Tinky Winky?”<\/p>\n
“Blue.” We discussed this for a while, and agreed that Tinky Winky was actually purple.<\/p>\n
“What color is LaaLaa?” “Yewwow.” “What color is Dipsy?” “Geen.”<\/p>\n
This doesn’t necessarily establish the level of detail he remembers, since the colors of the Tubbies are significant and memorisable facts, like their favourite things. So I asked the clincher, something that isn’t generally emphasised in the show.<\/p>\n
“What color is LaaLaa’s ball?”<\/p>\n
“O’ange.”<\/p>\n
He’s clearly got a visual picture of the Teletubbies in his memory banks somewhere. Very observant bunny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were walking home from nursery this evening when we were overtaken by an older child on a scooter. Alex watched him with evident admiration, then turned to me and said, “‘Cooter. Po ‘cooter.” I agreed that it was a scooter, and that Po had a scooter. “Te’tubbies ‘cooter. Po ‘cooter.” I agreed that there … Continue reading The Conversationalist, Part II<\/span>