Dirk's not an illiterate, he knows what childhood is 'supposed' to entail. He also knows exactly zero people whose formative years were anything like what he's gleaned from his thousands of hours of Sesame Street, Wikipedia, anime, and Jake's movies.
Except John, and to a lesser extent Jane. And even with them--
"Is that pathetic?" he asks, a little dubiously.
"But yeah, I can imagine that pretty clearly. I can even extrapolate a little." He doesn't ask for permission, filling in what he knows--not about her, although he has every reason to assume he does know, because it's what he knows.
"His was a world outside of your world. Which changed yours in a way that you couldn't reverse, even if you wanted to." He can Hear it, the way it would sound, does sound with him back in place as narrator. "It was bigger, but also more limited... or at least, you now saw and felt those limits in new ways, and felt confined by them in ways you hadn't before you knew him."
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Dirk's not an illiterate, he knows what childhood is 'supposed' to entail. He also knows exactly zero people whose formative years were anything like what he's gleaned from his thousands of hours of Sesame Street, Wikipedia, anime, and Jake's movies.
Except John, and to a lesser extent Jane. And even with them--
"Is that pathetic?" he asks, a little dubiously.
"But yeah, I can imagine that pretty clearly. I can even extrapolate a little." He doesn't ask for permission, filling in what he knows--not about her, although he has every reason to assume he does know, because it's what he knows.
"His was a world outside of your world. Which changed yours in a way that you couldn't reverse, even if you wanted to." He can Hear it, the way it would sound, does sound with him back in place as narrator. "It was bigger, but also more limited... or at least, you now saw and felt those limits in new ways, and felt confined by them in ways you hadn't before you knew him."