MY FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL VI

[Eric Georges Charles Weets]

It was, for everybody, a special moment when these two guys in grey dustcoats carried, with the necessary difficulties, the big carton box, containing our brand new television from the front door, through the hall way, into the kitchen. The strong man put the quite heavy looking box on the kitchen table, because grandmother was still busy with cleaning the top of the small wooden table, on which the radio stood before. They put the poor radio, for the time being, in the next room on the sofa there. I felt a little bit sorry for the radio, who was lying there sadly on his side on a pillow, knowing his era came to an end.

One of the delivery man attended grandfather, that they were going to put the antenna on the roof against the chimney and they wanted to know from where he preferred, they brought the antenna wire in the kitchen. Grandfather hoped that they could get the cable through that small hole above the back door, but the technician did not see this as a possibility, because he wanted to keep the cable as short as possible, otherwise they lost too much of the signal, the technician said, thereby the cable was also not so cheap.

While the technician explained grandfather why they want to bring the cable inside, through the glass dome above the table, more and more people sowed up. The butcher, his madam, and their two sons, the husband of Sabine from the grocery shop, who was, visibly, not too sober, the boss of Cafe the Kroon, with a customer from his Cafe, Albert from the Ice cream parlor and all my brother’s friends. Even Marcel’s mother, who was just like grandmother, rarely seen outside her door, stood in our kitchen. Everybody wanted to be present when they unpacked the wonder of the century, which stood there still in the big box on the kitchen table. The irritating crowd pushed me so far back that I missed the memory worthy, remarkable moment, the television came out of the box. I heard that everybody got excited, but I did not see a damn thing. I stood there watching a forest of legs, shaking as a leaf on a tree, pulling people’s pant, from curiosity.

After a lot of talking, drinking beer and doing not much, they got it done that the television stood safely on the small table before dinner time, with the voltage plug in the socket. But it took still a nerve wrecking long time before we got something to see on the tube.

How stupid it may also sound, the delay was caused by the miscommunication between the man on the roof, who had to position the antenna in the correct direction from where the signal came, and the one who sat in front of the television, judging in which direction, left or right, the man on the roof had to turn the antenna, to get the clearest and sharpest picture possible.

Both men could not see each other from where they were sitting, therefore they put The Cools, the owner of the Cafe De Kroon who volunteered for it, somewhere half way in the garden. He could shout the directions given by the man sitting in front of the television to the man on the roof and vice versa. But there, The Cools was not on his first beer of the day and spoke a little bit with a double tongue, there were quite a lot of misunderstandings. It went so far that the man on the roof got seriously upset and wanted to give up and leave his portion to the cat, but with luck for us all, just that moment the television started showing some sign of life, but it still took a while before the goddamn picture stopped rolling.

The two delivery men stood there with their back against the green door of the built in closet, slurping on their beer, satisfied that a good job was done. The rest of the idiots, who did not give me even a square inch of space to stand on, stood there, with the noses in their beer, nailed to the ground. They watched with eyes, so big as turkey eggs, at a big piece of furniture with a strange grey tube in the middle.

There, there were no programs running yet, you saw only a test picture containing four small circles on the side and a big one in the middle and all kinds of lines around. The peep sound the box made was not something you want to enjoy for long. Nevertheless, everybody agreed that it will become more exciting when the real programs began.

With luck for grandmother there were no programs coming soon, so she asked grandfather to turn off the machine. Slowly everybody emptied their glasses and moved out, including grandfather. He could not refuse the invitation from De Cools to have a couple of beers in his café. Grandmother did not care so long they all moved out as quickly as possible. Go where you cannot stay away from, I heard her whispering.

In our house the television was switched on long before the programs started. Without sound of course, because the peep tone of the test picture made our Miret crazy.

Grandmother was convinced that our doggie Miret could sense the moment when grandfather left his second home, Café Het Rozeke, his favorite pub. Because long before the old man put his cycle against the front wall of our

house, the dog started jumping up and down, in a manner of speaking, against the kitchen door which led to the hallway. She could not jump very high anymore because she was not from the youngest, calculated in human years she was 74 years old, said grandmother.

For me it looked strange that our small dog with long white hair and the snout of a mouse, could be thousand times more stupid, when she was so many years older than me. She let me pull her ears, I could hit under her ass and let her bite in her own tail. Sometimes, by mistake, she bit my hand but with her old worn out teeth she did not hurt me anymore. When I was running in the garden, she would run in front or behind me, even when it was costing her, her last breath.

Our Miret also liked to sleep on grandfather’s feet when he sat on the table, just like she did with me. Once when I pointed this out to Yves, he said sarcastically, that it had to do with the fact that grandfather was just so filthy as I was.

After all my brother’s notebooks were covered, which took much longer than I hoped, grandmother gave me the permission to switch on the television.

I bent over from the sofa till I went almost on my face, to get so close to the television tube, that my nose almost touched the glass. I focused my eyes on the circles in the middle of the test picture. If I did this long enough, I could see colors emerging between the circles and the lines started dancing, something that fascinated me enormously.

Why they showed always a test picture before the real program started, I did not know and nobody wanted to tell me so. But anyway, so long it did not stand there for ages, I found it a pleasure to watch.

The, much too long and nerve breaking first school day, sucked all the energy out of my little body. It became slowly very difficult for me to keep my eyes open. Still, and this out of pure stubbornness, I stayed on till they sent me to bed.

The bedroom where I and my brother slept, could not be called a children’s bedroom, far from it. It looked more like an antique bedroom for elderly people, out of Jesus’ time.

Left, opposite of the door, next to the mantelpiece, stood a small black closet with copper handles. That thing must be, guaranteed, hundred years old because it was already in my grandfather’s family from when his great grandfather was young. On the right side of the mantelpiece a lavabo with three heavy drawers above each other, a marble top on which a old fashioned porcelain can and a washbasin, decorated with small pinkish flowers, behind that a big mirror, in serious decline, because that thing was a little of the same age as the black closet. You could see in the mirror not only your face three times but also in any shapes and forms.

The place under the mantelpiece, where normally the coal stove stood was covered with a light blue curtain with pink flowers. The hole in the wall of the chimney pipe, they filled with old news papers, otherwise you felt continuously a cold draft in the room.

On top of the mantelpiece, in the middle, stood a Virgin Mary under a glass stolp. The Mary and the child were wearing a dark blue velvet cape with golden embroidery on the side and had golden crowns on their heads. On both sides of the shiny glass stolp, stood two enormous copper bombshells, souvenirs from out of the First World War, with delicately engraved flowers on it.

Above this all hung a big black cross with a milky white Jesus nailed on it. The poor Jesus missed one arm because of an accident. Once, when I was playing football in my bed room, what was between brackets, not allowed, the ball went a little too high and the cross came of the wall, without I could do anything against it, and fell in pieces on the ground. Big brother tried so good as possible to repair the Jesus, who already in normal circumstances did not look so healthy, but the right arm was in such a mess, that it was impossible to stick it back on.

We slept in a double bed, which was not only older than we were, but even older than the bombshells on the mantelpiece. It had, on the head and feet end, two high panels decorated with flowers carved in the wood and under the feather mattress, there were still metal springs. The springs were not in good condition anymore because we dared to stand on the panels and jump down on it like on a trampoline. This made that it was very difficult to stay on your side of the bed. If you wanted it or not, you rolled, while sleeping, automatically you rolled to the middle because of the broken springs. This led, more than once, to big quarrel. I and big brother alike got the shivers if our bodies touched each other. It had to be freezing cold in the room before we slept against each other. Normally, I did not like my brother close by because he moved around the whole night, hitting me in his sleep even more than he did in the day time. He did not want to be touched by me because in Mister’s opinion, I sweated as a pig.

Big brother could not leave it to tell me over and over again, that a lot of old people died in our bed. Grandmother said that he lied and that he did not know what he was talking about. But anyway I kept my doubts for years to come. Once I thought that I saw one of these dead people, standing at the back of my bed, but grandmother explained that it could not be true, because dead people go straight to heaven, hell or sit for a while in the purgatory. It was most probably the devil I saw. Also Uncle Albert, her younger brother saw him once, when he was a child, after he did things which was not allowed.

I arrived dead tired in the bedroom, jumped in my pajama and sat down on my knees front of the bed. I let my elbows rest on the bed sheet and folded my hand in front of my mouth. Inarticulately, I mumbled three Hail Mary’s and one Our father in Heaven.

Good and well cozy under the blanket I reviewed my day half asleep. I could not say that my day had much in common with the one I dreamt of. It was more the opposite. It looked that everything that could principally go wrong, went wrong.

I implored God the Father and all the holy ones to look a little bit better after me, when I had to face that horrible teacher again. The good fairy I prayed to give me a magic wand where I could change the master into a piglet or a white rabbit alike, when he threatened me again to slap me on my ears. The school, I wanted to turn into a dream palace with only friendly teachers, like the headmaster was.

After reciting the three extra Hail Mary’s, I promised to my protection angel, I drifted away in a deep sleep.