A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.

Vaughan’s observation contrasts adult assumptions about value with a toddler’s scale of delight. A costly, carefully purchased swing set and a chance discovery—a “small green worm”—can produce nearly equal joy for a three-year-old, because novelty, immediacy, and sensory engagement matter more than price or prestige. The line gently satirizes consumerist thinking (the idea that spending more guarantees more happiness) and suggests that wonder is not proportional to expense. Implicitly, it invites adults to reconsider what children actually need, and to recover a childlike capacity to take pleasure in the ordinary, the found, and the inexpensive.