An experience of reincarnation, and how our children can sometimes be wiser and more knowledgeable than ourselves.

"When I was a young man," is not the sort of thing one expects to hear coming from the mouth of a two-year-old.

The child in question was David, the son of one of my mother's friends. My mother had a baby at about the same time and they would spend time at each other's houses talking baby-talk, drinking coffee and watching pre-school television. On one such afternoon they were watching a program about penguins. There was the usual comical scenes of penguins waddling around to some cheerful music, and sliding down icebanks into the sea.

"Look, David," said his mother. "Penguins!"

David scowled at her, and gave her a look as though she was of subnormal intelligence. "They're not penguins," he said petulantly. "They're Rockhoppers."

"What?"

"Rockhoppers," David repeated. "When I was a yong man, I went sailing on a big ship, and I saw them."

Needless to say this piqued the curiosity of David's mother and mine, and they started to do a little research. Sure enough, the penguins that had been displayed on that TV programme were indeed called Rockhoppers; characterised by their small size, and fans of vivid yellow feathers around their heads. Neither she nor my mother had ever heard of such a thing before.

David's mother asked him to tell her more about how he knew about the Rockhoppers. He insisted again that he had seen them when he was a young man, and he went on to describe other things that he had seen too; icebergs and storms, and other strange creatures.

The phrase "When I was a young man..." was becoming commonplace in his household; he would often make some offhand comment about things he remembered, about his journeys, about the ship, about the way he thought and acted.

In case he was making things up, David's mother wrote down many of the details, particularly about the ship itself, and she took these to a local college historian, without telling him where she had found the details. He confirmed that they comprised an accurate description of a ship (of a particular type whose name I cannot remember) from the early 18th century.

It seemed from what David was saying that when he was a young man, he had been some sort of explorer; a zoologist or scientist, on a voyage of discovery around the coast of southern South America. He spoke of things that no two-year-old could possibly have understood or even been aware of; no-one in his family had anything like the knowledge he was talking about, so he could not have picked it up from overhearing conversations.

Even if he had picked it up from conversation, or from the television, it seemed unlikely that a two-year old would prefix his knowledge with the phrase "When I was a young man..." Such an odd thng for a child of his age to say even once.

In the end, David forgot about his sailing ship, and his voyages of exploration. By the time he was five, his head was full of the things any normal five-year-old thinks about.

It seems a shame, to me, that we must forget.