Do you write down weird encounters with life when they happen, only half-understanding? This diary entry reads 02.02.2024. From the overcast corner of Hohenzollern and Balanstraße in Munich, at around 11:00 AM, I’d taken myself home to the blank page. The picture I chose? That’s me, 40 years ago.
The city centre was deserted. I looked left, I looked right. I calculated the distance between me and the tram and estimated my luck. Then I pushed my body forwards, my legs followed. The tram rammed through and left a gust of wind behind me, the entire street's windows rattling in its wake.
On the kerb, I almost stumbled, the pavement wide. I was safe.
"Hellooo." Startled, I looked at the child. I had deliberately crossed the road on a red light. A small blond boy with a scooter and helmet stared up at me with large blue eyes and a sensitive forehead. In my mind, I could already see him lying flat on the road, bleeding from the mouth, the scooter knocked sideways. Guilt ate away at me— the bad role model.
"I did something really bad," I stuttered. I was already scared of his parents. He stared at me, sitting there with big blue eyes, not understanding. I tried to explain. "I jaywalked. You're not allowed to do that."
Again, he waited politely, observing me. Of course, I did not believe a word I was saying. Why not, if there's no car coming? Guilt turned into desperation confronted by that quiet gaze, if I was to forbid this stranger to do something that made no sense to me, something he had just seen me do, happily and willingly, in defiance of all caution.
"But you're still beautiful." I stared at him blankly, narrowing my eyes. In an instant, I played the responsible adult.
"That's correct," I said immediately and leapt into a stride, suddenly petrified.
The words had landed in my gut. “You’re still beautiful.” You? "Sie" in German can be both polite—the way a child is required to address a stranger—or a plural, for anything, I ruminated. I imagined flowers - red, blue, tulips. They should be beautiful. They should be pointed at. But there were no flowers. Did the child mean me? How did he know that I needed to hear this, which I myself didn't even know yet? “But you’re still beautiful.”
Each pace left him further away from me, further into the past. I slouched with shame when I could not allow myself to run back, ashamed to be like his parents, perhaps, forbidding him to do what I did, telling him what was correct just to hide I was clueless. Most of all, I was ashamed that I hadn't stayed longer to talk to him—to ask him about the dangers in life, like getting deep with strangers in public, or other people's children, or believing all the rules…
Or simply taking the risk to be totally slain by surprise, one overcast Friday, losing the way home.
