A BAD WORD

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This is the first time I participate to Fun Monday ! I read the theme on Hootin Anni's blog who hosted it last week. This week it is Karisma who gave us following theme to write about :

"I want you to take a trip down memory lane, and keep right on going, right back to your childhood. And I want to hear "THAT STORY". You remember the one? Yes, you do! The one your parents, siblings, extended family or friends, would never let you forget, live down or get over!"Add a picture of yourself at the age your story took place. So there you go. Not too difficult, I think. The only rule is, that the story MUST be about yourself. Not your children, siblings or your significant other. (This is the one rule you may NOT bend, even you Swampy!)"

This is probably an easy one, but not for me ! When I go back to my childhood there are not many pictures of me. I was 2 years old when World War II ended and people had other things in mind than taking pictures of their children or paying attention to what they may have said. Cameras, who had one ? That was something which people could buy later in the 50th, when I was little, people were running behind food.

But there is one story I remember because a neighbor told me about that years later when I already lived in Brussels and was there on a visit.

I lived with my parents in Bonn which was the capital of the new Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government until 1999. My father working for a government department was very lucky that with his job he also got a flat for his family. Most of the people were living in the basements of the ruins of their house or in the remaining bunkers.

In this council estate all people were equally rich or poor because they all had started with 1 DM.
We kids had a playground in the middle of two buildings where we spent our days together. School anyway was only half a day and as there were no buildings to house a school we went to school for 4 h in the morning or for 4 h in the afternoon so that everybody had a chance to find a seat. I remember when I was 8 years old we were around 80 pupils in one class. We had to share one seat into two. But all this was completely normal to me and my life was nice and funny. The less I had to go to school the better it was.

Of course I also learned bad words and these were very interesting to all children because they were forbidden. My mother had told me that "Shit" was a very bad word and I should never use it. Apparently that made me curious. Indeed I didn't use it but one day from the playground I screemed for my mother who was in our flat in the second floor. My mother appeared on the little balcony and asked what happened and I shouted : Mamma, Gisela has said SHIT ! SHIT is a bad word isn't that true, Mamma that SHIT is bad and you told me never to say SHIT, but she said SHIT, Mamma isn't that bad ? She shouldn't use SHIT true ? My mother apparently was very embarrassed and tried to make me stop because the other women also appeared on their balcony to see what happened. But I still continued to explain to everybody who wanted to listen to me that SHIT was bad and SHIT shouldn't be said and that Gisela is a bad girl because she had used the word SHIT.

The neighbor told me then that my poor mother disappeared from the balcony to stop my logical explanations and I had the satisfaction to have used a bad word at least 10 times without using it.



This is me around 8 or 9 years old at the Rhine. (Just notice the guy who has a strange glance on me !)

Next week our host is Blue Momma