(no subject)
Yesterday a 1.5 year old neighbors' son performed the wish that all the neighbors of our little village had cherished and carried with them behind their rib cages for so long. Now I understand what their sly glances had meant all that time.
Like the bound feet of their ancestors the poor souls who by the whim of fate happened to share the same neighborhood with me had been burning to reach out, but shied away from the urge of their ingenuous natures, suppressed by social conventions.
We camped in the middle of the road as usual, in that popular amongst us gypsy-like unpretentious manner. By now it has stopped bothering our village motorists too much, they are not too great in number anyway. The human younglings of ours happily crawled and dashed around, some wailed, some investigated the enchanting world of green organic grass and orange caterpillars. That little cub of a boy wobbled towards me, looked seriously in my eyes and shout out his hand. As it was approaching my face, he slowed down, ever so gently grabbed my beard and delicately pulled a couple of times. The expression on his face was by then that of a researcher doing his experiments with an unpredictable result.
The parents stopped whatever they had been doing (that mostly being shooting the breeze) and gave out various noises of appreciation, which consisted basically of the popular in this part of the world ah-yaaa's and yi-eee's.
I was in a propitious mood that day and benevolently permitted the young researcher to repeat the experiment. After that the adult expression of his face was washed away by the usual hummy visage and, content to the most sacred nooks of his young heart, he wobbled away, and I sat there, as if nothing had happened, - but now a new man, an educator and an exhibit of natural wonders.
Like the bound feet of their ancestors the poor souls who by the whim of fate happened to share the same neighborhood with me had been burning to reach out, but shied away from the urge of their ingenuous natures, suppressed by social conventions.
We camped in the middle of the road as usual, in that popular amongst us gypsy-like unpretentious manner. By now it has stopped bothering our village motorists too much, they are not too great in number anyway. The human younglings of ours happily crawled and dashed around, some wailed, some investigated the enchanting world of green organic grass and orange caterpillars. That little cub of a boy wobbled towards me, looked seriously in my eyes and shout out his hand. As it was approaching my face, he slowed down, ever so gently grabbed my beard and delicately pulled a couple of times. The expression on his face was by then that of a researcher doing his experiments with an unpredictable result.
The parents stopped whatever they had been doing (that mostly being shooting the breeze) and gave out various noises of appreciation, which consisted basically of the popular in this part of the world ah-yaaa's and yi-eee's.
I was in a propitious mood that day and benevolently permitted the young researcher to repeat the experiment. After that the adult expression of his face was washed away by the usual hummy visage and, content to the most sacred nooks of his young heart, he wobbled away, and I sat there, as if nothing had happened, - but now a new man, an educator and an exhibit of natural wonders.