Posted on June 12
1:21 p.m. I’m lying on my lounge chair. I cook in the sun at the same rate as an egg full of butter in a hot frying pan. Two years ago, I chose this house for two reasons: the permanent sunshine through large mature trees and the schoolyard. It would be wrong to say that I have no neighbours. I have 400. They’re in my yard, three times a day.
I am not particularly attached to the children who play during their breaks, but I recognize them by their voice. I attach myself to their stories, their sorrows, their unbearable cries. They brought me back to the constant noises of the neighborhoods where I grew up.
They are often under the big willow that overlooks my yard when it is fully extended. Young people like to go make up stories under him to hide from the sun and have some privacy.
I always take the time to listen to them, to judge them, to laugh. The confidence and personality of the human develop precisely there: in a schoolyard where wickedness and sharing frequently rub shoulders. As if opposite emotions were learning to coexist.
There’s this little guy who yells like he’s constantly on fire. This little boy never tires of screaming at his loudest. As soon as the school doors open, he fills his lungs with air and lets out excess energy. He can frustrate by shouting, but he does himself good.
There is the little girl who always invents that she is currently in a chalet. She has six bedrooms and she likes to invite her friends in.
Her friend often lives in an even bigger chalet.
So the first little girl tells her that she has no right to have more guest rooms than her. They start to argue and I wonder if I should intervene. They make me realize that even what goes on in our head can confront others. This conversation ends in a squabble. I want to tell them that the bigger the chalet, the more likely it will be empty.
There is the supervisor who is not happy in life. I think she doesn’t like her job or the kids. She always repeats three times the same indication without return of any child. I suspect she is schizophrenic and lives in her head.
There’s Leo, my 5-year-old neighbor, who always comes to say hello and brings along a new friend to brag that he’s my neighbor. His friends are rarely impressed and return to run, shouting their loudest in the void.
I like to feel normal. Not impressive. A child brings you back to your simplest form.
Finally, there is the little criss. The one that I would gently pinch. To make him cry without hurting him.
This little criss plays alone under the weeping willow. He hangs himself from the longest vine and pulls with all his might, hoping to break it. No one ever tells him anything. I’m not a tree, but I know that right now, if the tree could give it a little leg up, it would. He slept all winter, woke up naked in the spring and finally in the summer he is at his most beautiful. And that’s when the little criss comes to rush him trying to break him.
And that’s where I become the neighbor you don’t want to have.
I go to the edge of my fence and I say in the voice of an old supervisor who is exhausted: “Young man, you mustn’t pull on the branch. »
He stops. Looks at me and freezes.
With my index finger I say “no”, repeating: “You must not pull on the branch. Would you like it if I grab onto your hair and pull hard, hard, hard? »
He runs to the supervisor, awakens her from her schizophrenic hallucination by saying: “The madam said she would pull my hair. »
I scream through my fence that it’s not true, that it was a metaphor and that I won’t hurt him for real.
I go back to my lounge chair and tell myself that adult life is confrontational in many ways, but never as much as that of a 5-year-old child trying to exist without disturbing.
Until he realizes that I am their neighbor.
I love children. Especially those who exist at the height of their creativity.