As I pushed the weight of my stomach against the ancient gray stone, I craned my neck down to peer at the moss-splotched gargoyle. With the camera strap wrapped around my wrist, I zeroed in on its mottled, arched back, erect ears and territorial snarl. The flash popped, and, for that second, I was able to frame the picture so that the gargoyle held the roof of a vine-covered cottage in its open jaws.
Mildly amused at having turned a piece of Gothic architecture into a home-eating monster, I reported to my roommate what I had done. Sighing, she clucked, “You’re just like a little kid.” I didn’t even turn to look at her when she spoke. While everyone else in the group had been busy photographing the view of Amboise and the Loire, I was still preoccupied with the stone guardian.
Is it childish to get caught up in details? My roommate’s criticism equated my way of looking at the world with immaturity. The gargoyle thing was silly, but I thought it was much more interesting than the same old, full frontal castle snapshot seen on all of the town’s 40 centimes postcards.
I spent the rest of the day pondering what she had said and then began to think about the kids I’ve seen recently in Tours, the city in France where I’m staying. The children are the most interesting people here. They don’t scowl and stare at the ground as they walk. Instead, they scream as they play soccer, purposely run into each other on their bicycles and babble at you when you wait in line.
The first French child I met was Mathieu, the son of my host mother’s neighbors. As the adults chitchatted outside our front door, the curly-haired little boy was climbing up and down the three-stair stoop and looking around inquisitively. Pausing, he produced from his pocket a set of what appeared to be “Magic: The Gathering” cards. Looking at me with a child’s glowing pride, he declared that the creature on the top card was a “monstre!”
In addition to being wonderfully curious, little kids just have more fun. For instance, the other afternoon at the braderie, a ridiculously overcrowded twice-a-year sale and festival, I had a literal run-in with a little girl. She apparently had much more energy than all the other shoppers, the most dedicated of whom had been out since 8 a.m. Jetting away from her fashionably dressed parents during a break in the crowd, she smacked up against my side. Her blonde pigtails flowing behind her, she kept on running and laughing.
Perhaps the kind of uninhibited fun children have derives from their heightened sense of wonder. For example, in a cove of trees in the park near my apartment, there is a small, natural rock waterfall that kids love to play near. Several times when walking home from class in the early evening, I have seen a mousy girl, probably around six years old, playing in the area. Each time I’ve seen her, she has walked carefully along the dry parts of the rock as her father, still in his work clothes, patiently looked on. On one occasion, she plopped her dress-wearing self down on the gravel. As I passed, she was insisting that her father look at the chateau she was making with piles of the small brown stones.
She and I both rendered a castle as we saw it, hers focused on piles for le roi and la reine, and mine centered around one mottled, stone creature. She took pleasure in something as basic as gravel, just as Mathieu had found his cards a matter of pride. Childhood experiences just seem much more colorful, simple and fun. If I did indeed act child-like in framing that picture the way I did, I see nothing wrong with that.
Kim Rinehimer is a junior in the College and an associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. Sometimes she wishes she was Peter Pan.
