Doll Stories and more
Christmas 1973
January / 2001
My daughter Solveig is not yet two years old. She is going to have her second birthday in March 1974. But she is already a very intelligent, high-spirited and lively girl. And she was lacking her “liveless” three months which are often usual for many babies.
This clever girl always wanted to know everything. Many times during the christmas season I read to her the long poem about “Knecht Ruprecht”. For me as her mother it was more than a thousand times. She can finally tell it by heart.
My parents-in-law take her to a christmas party and as the little girl wants to tell this poem in front of the audience like all the other children do, they tell her: “You are to young, you are not allowed to do this.”
They are probably afraid that this will compromise them. She is their first grandchild. My own parents are angry about this and the proud grandmother takes her 13th grandchild to a christmas fair.
With her gray coat made of tweed, her red stockings and her large cap she looks like a very small midget. Her new game is “hopping around” The pavement is an ideal place for this. The grandmother urges her grandchild: “Let’s get to the market.”
The small midget discovers a large advertisementposter with a tiger on it. It says: take the tiger into your tank.
She says: “Look grandma, a tider!”
The little girl speaks no special baby language but it is sometimes difficult for her to pronounce all letters correctly. So it can happen that a K becomes a T and a G becomes a D. The word “Kindergarten” sounds like “Tinderdarten” when she pronounces it.
The little one still jumps up and down the pavement and points with her finger towards the advertisement and says: “Tider, grandma, tider! (Tiger, grandma, tiger)
Her grandmother doesn’t understand the little girl and says: „Come on, darling, come on.“
But the little girl is persistent. Her patience is almost limitless.
“Tider, grandma, tider”
Her forefinger seems almost to drill into the advertisement poster. Her grandmother urges her again: “Come on, let’s go. Look at all those people, they are already returning from the christmas market.”
Finally the little girl is out of patience. She shouts as loud as she can: “Tiiider, grandma, tiiider”
The grandma sounds uncomfortable: “Come on, the people are already watching us.”
The girl is filled with dispair, when she angrily stamps with her foot onto the ground and shouts on top of her lungs: “Are you stupid grandma, don’t you know a lion?”
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