We did not wait for D-Day to prepare for the event. For some time now, we had informed the child: it is almost back to school.
– It’s awesome ! You will find your friends, you will tell each other about your holidays, learn lots of new things, have fun
At break.
The Child displayed barely polite disdain, in “Daddy I can’t hear you” mode.
He was in denial. We must admit that our rhetoric was damn hypocritical: how to sell him that getting up early in the morning, eating breakfast in fourth gear and leaving in the gray to join the herd, is better than spending his days running in the fields. fields
at grandma’s or to slide down a water slide? How do you make a human being believe that? Do you like back to school?
The alarm rings and the first sentence spoken by the child is:
– I don’t want to go to school.
It begins well. Since the time, he knows that “I do not want to go to school” is not an admissible argument. That the crisis of tears is useless. He’ll go to school anyway. It’s the law. He still tries a Trafalgar move:
– No, but I called Emmanuel Macron, he said that I didn’t have to go.
The father refrains from bursting into laughter while the child affirms, with the utmost seriousness:
– Yes, yes, it’s true.
Five years old, the mythological age.
Follows a pantomime already frequently used during the previous year. The child is dragging its feet. Literally. Like a rag doll. When you lift him off the bed, he falls as if his legs aren’t working.
– Dad, I have no legs.
(In fact, yes, he even has two.) We drag him across the floor to bring him to the breakfast table while mom, from the bathroom, motivates the troops:
– Let’s move, it’s already 8:07 a.m.
We put a few sandwiches in his mouth (he has no arms either) while he heaves exasperated sighs to protest against this unjust world where you have to wake up to face society.
Shouldn’t we be worried about such reluctance, ask the parents? Isn’t it the sign of a deeper unease? Bullying ? Racket? Trafficking in cocaine at recess (I’m not too worried, he enters the large section, a priori, he will not deal immediately).
In the street, the child, who has accepted his fate, does not utter a word. He holds our hand but shouts. The hubbub and the commotion in front of the school left him unmoved. He barely calculates his friends – who have grown up – come to say hello.
He does not return the kiss that accompanies the:
– Good day my darling, I love you.
The father, like the mother, is having a bad day.
In the evening, after school, we ask the fateful question:
– So son, what was it like back to school?
– It was awesome!