THEN AND NOW
The Pedant Class and Your Stars
SOMEONE once told me that it is unwise to offend short people because they have short tempers, but that they will also forgive and forget fairly quickly due to their short memories.
I think it is short-sighted to short-change the vertically challenged in this way. Some of the world’s best books are short. So are some of the finest writers.
Last week I rediscovered a remarkable collection of brief works by little people. I have Marie Kondo and her fellow declutterers to thank for this. During a short-lived spell of throwing-stuff-out fever, I found a tattered old packet containing the stapled-together “magazine” compiled annually by the primary school I attended back when weekends were long and adults were tall.
I recognised some of the small shining faces in faded class photographs, but the real treasure was in the writing. In short, I had no idea how talented my tiny compatriots were.
Decluttering went in the dustbin as I sat on the floor for hours and read diminutive works of giant imagination. Two stories were so good that it would be remiss of me not to share them with everyone who believes in heroes, good sentence structure and judicious use of the word “suddenly”.
The first is Chased by an Angry Bull, written by Robert Morschel: “One day a boy called Robert lived in Mexico. He loved watching bullfights. One day he went to a bullfight. He was somewhere in the front. The bullfighter came out and everyone cheered. Suddenly the bull charged out. The bullfighter never saw the bull. Suddenly the bullfighter who was called ‘Joe’ was tossed five feet off the ground by the bull. Robert jumped off the stand and ran towards the bull. The bull saw him and charged at Robert. Robert ran to Joe and picked him up. They then ran to a hole in the ground. The bull ran after them. Joe and Robert jumped into the hole. Luckily it was big enough to fit both people in. The bull tried to stop but he tripped over a stone. Robert tied the bull and everyone cheered Robert because he saved a man’s life. The next day in the news paper it said. ‘A boy of sixteen saves a man from being killed in a Bullfight. The boy’s name is ROBERT!!’ ”
Robert, if memory serves me right, was about eight at the time. He was a serious boy who played excellent chess on the days when he wasn’t rescuing matadors in distress.
I also remember Micheline Coning, an impish little girl with pigtails, who wrote about a perfectly ordinary week in which nothing much happened: “My father runs a whaling business. One day he came home and told my brother and me we were old enough to join him on his cruiser. My mother decided to come also so she could help the cooks in the galley. Our ship was one of the biggest. We lived by the sea and we had an enormous rocky pool full of sea water. That evening we went abroad. The cruiser set out just as the sun was setting. The next evening we had caught forty sperm whales. The next evening we had caught nine blue whales. As the sailors had gone down below to talk to my father, a plank swayed and knocked me overboard. I screamed, my father heard me and let down a rope ladder. A killer whale had been making its way towards me. My father shot it and I climbed, thankfully, aboard. When I reached home nobody believed me. I thought it was very sad because it was an adventure.”
I don’t know where Robert and Micheline are now, but I’d love them to know that words dreamed up by great big beautiful minds inside pint-sized heads will always have the power to delight us. LS
‘A killer whale had been making its way towards me. My father shot it’