On Facebook yesterday I made the observation that I truly love the sense of wonder children seem to have; how we, as adults, tend to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to find the mechanics of a thing or the man behind the mask, whereas a child believes absolutely and irrefutably in the sheer magic of the moment. It's a thought which always comes to me - as it did yesterday - when watching the Doctor Who Prom; as much as I love the absurdity of the event and the absolutely brilliant and beautiful music, (yes, all right, and Matt Smith), for me the Doctor Who Prom is worth watching for one reason and one reason alone: to see the faces of the children when the monsters suddenly appear.
Now I don't doubt for one second that, were I to be lucky enough to attend said Prom one year, I too would be ecstatic with glee at the sight of a Cyberman or Dalek coming towards me; I'm a big geek/kid when it comes to that stuff and I don't deny it, but deep down inside I know at the end of the Prom the Cybermen et al take off their masks and their costumes and go back to being normal people with a really cool day job playing Cybermen. The joy I get from seeing them is always tempered with that knowledge; it's the fundamentally sucky part of being a grown up. I'm also reasonably convinced that every single kid in that auditorium knows, deep down inside, that the Cybermen and Sontarans and Daleks and Silurians and what-not are really people-in-costume, but for one shining moment all disbelief is suspended and you can see it on every single face of every single child: oh my god, that's a Cyberman. Right there in front of me is a real live Cyberman...
It's the singularly most magical thing about the entire event for me.
It saddens me to see how fast children grow up these days. Childhood seems such a fleeting, momentary thing; gone before you even really grasped its existence or celebrated its sheer, lyrical potential. Some kids have to grow up fast of course, forced by circumstances beyond their control, but the vast majority just seem to reach a point where they just aren't kids any more. My niece only turned eleven last week but already she's putting away her soft toys and her Sylvanian Family collection because shes 'too old' for them; something I find incredibly depressing. Where's the law that says you have to 'put away childish things' once you reach some arbitrary age limit, even if you still really love them? Why is having her favourite Build-a-Bear bear on her bed suddenly seen as some crime? I know they can't stay kids forever but these days they seem to be getting older at a much younger age...
Now the sociologist in me wants to do some study here of the correlation between kids growing up too fast and the teenage pregnancy rate or something, but since this is a blog rather than a journal I'll control my inner researcher and refrain from doing so. (Still, there's gotta be something in it somewhere along the line, right...?) But working in the fields I do/have done, I've seen an awful lot of kids 'old before their time'; kids who, for whatever reason, have had the magic disappear. So I want to make a plea here. Firstly, if you're a parent or an auntie or an uncle or have any contact with little kids at all (legally, obviously) then I want to ask you to do whatever you can to keep the magic and innocence of childhood going for as long as possible. Write them letters from Santa. Sprinkle pixie-dust on the pillow when the Tooth Fairy pays a visit. Believe in the monster living under their bed or in their wardrobe, and make sure they see you giving it a stern talking-to every night so they won't be afraid. Childhood is a magical time and it should be nurtured, cherished and celebrated, so run with it for as long as you can and let the children in your life be children.
My other plea is to you. Yes you, the grown-up-type person reading this very blog right now. I want you to do me a favour. The next time you see the mechanics behind the smoke and mirrors, or catch sight of the man behind the mask, I want you to close your eyes and count to three before opening them again. When you do, I want you to see, even for a moment, what a child would see and to enjoy that fleeting moment of wonder. Life is far too full of stresses and strains and waaaaaay short on wonder for the most part; take it where you can find it, my friends, and never be afraid of it. Unless it actually IS a Cyberman...
As one of my heroes J.M Barrie once said, "if growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up!!"
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