Mirri’s Sock

Awareness doesn't need awareness, Mirri said. She says random things like that often. Things that look little, in between the dishes. Things that are small, like a tea spoon or suds. It flows away in the drain, gone. Later it comes flowing from the shower and the water takes all our thoughts and feelings with it. The little holes in the shower head are actually a sieve. Everything is reversed.

The best way to look at the world is upside down, when you are at the climbing frame. Than you can recognize something in the faces of people that is real. Weird alien eyes and legs that are arms. Toes are the fingers you walk on. Upside down the world makes sense. The floor is the air and you aren't locked up in gravity. When you swirl, you fly. Totally free.

Mirri knows how these things work. She follows ladybirds with her fingers in the bushes. Sometimes she sees a spider web. The leafs smell like plant blood when you squeeze them. She ones had roller skates. When you fall on your butt it hurts. That's why it's better when the air is down.

Then roll skates are rockets that go like woesssj. She has a walkman since a few days. With a fake cassette. She taped it over another cassette. She listens to it all day long, until the batteries are empty, and then she has to wait a whole day until the batteries are recharged. She can clip it on her clothes. She records little messages, little stories. She also records mama that tells her to clean her room and then she thinks: later. Later mama will hear how mean she sounds telling me to clean my room and then she will never ever say it again.

I will never tell my kids to clean their room, Mirri thought. Never ever. Because it's just impossible. When you clean you get lost in the books and puppets and toys cause you dream away and parents doesn't allow a week time to clean a room. It always has to happen today. But what if you find your lost stickers and want to feel them one by one? Or when you see the radio with the rec-button? When you are cleaning you have to put everything in the box or on the shelf. The books doesn’t like that at all. They actually want to be next to the bed. So you can watch the images just like that and read them, and make up even more stories by yourself. Most kids doesn't know that Dwight from the book has a whole other life next to the book. And Jim also. And the squirrel in the book also.

Jim can't sit all day long on the teeter-totter with Dwight in the book. That would be nuts. He also has to eat or go to the toilet. Well, when Mirri told that to the teacher once and she got soo mad. She thought that Dwight only lived in the books. Everything and everyone would be locked in books, Mirri thought. And what about the toys and the puppets? They don't just live in the closet or in the room. They experience everything you can imagine. It's not just plastic. That would be so boring.

Writers never can make up everything. That's why kids read books and stories. They can fantasize about Dwight and what Barbie is doing. Everyone knows that, Mirri thought. We don't read letters to read the same. That is just almost impossible.

Once Mirri had to make a drawing at school. She colored just like home beautiful spring flowers. And the teacher was so angry. She showed the drawing to the other kids and said it was ugly and that Mirri didn't tried to make it look nice. The teacher only saw scratches but Mirri saw beautiful amazing flowers.

Mirri had to cry very hard and ran to the toilet. She was only allowed to draw with one color at the time and the drawing had to be little. She liked to draw big and use all the paper. But the paper always was too small. The table was big. So she also drew on the table. The next time she drew with one color.  The teacher thought it was a very beautiful drawing. Pfff. As if. Once Mirri was so mad she broke the pencils in two and smashed it in class. She didn’t felt bad about it, cause actually she created two pencils from one pencil. But nobody seem to be happy about that.  Mirri finally discovered the trick. You had to sharpen your pencil and then everything looked nice. If you do that apparently drawings look nice. Pff. That was stupid, cause at home Mirri had much nicer drawings on very big paper and  with great scratches with all colors, cause mama gave big papers to Mirri.

Mirri told about the drawings she made to mama and pointed to everything.  Mama wrote it all down. She told about Eks and Mo and about other friends that not everyone saw. Mirri told about the planets from everywhere. About how mama and dad came to earth and why they weren’t living together anymore.  That wasn’t so bad cause it was like that for a long time. Mirri told about the next day and about the kids in class and what they thought and felt. About the teacher and that she was sick but she better could not tell that to the teacher she found out, cause she didn’t liked that. And bout the dead daddy of the teacher. She couldn’t talk about that also cause it made the teacher sad.  Actually, that was the reason she didn’t liked Mirri’s drawing. Cause she was afraid of Mirri.  But that wasn’t so bad.

At home Mirri could tell and draw whatever she want. Mama wasn’t mad when she drew on the white walls at home. Mirri said: Mama. I just had to do that, it was so white on the walls and Eks and Mo wanted to tell so much. Mama couldn’t read it but Mirri could tell about it. It was about the world and about how Mirri came to this world and it was about mama and papa en about Isabelle and the dog. The dog wasn’t at home anymore but lived with daddy. And the dog was a little scared and that was why he was barking so much. The dog had to run a lot but that wasn’t possible. And it was really a pity he had to leave. The dog was very sad about that. And Mirri didn’t liked it either.

Eks and Mo always took Mirri to the dog. Mirri could fly by herself now, to go watch things everywhere. She often went to the classroom to read the words for the next day that were on the board. Cause it’s so stupid you only are allowed to read 2 new words a day, Mirri thought. Mirri liked it to fly really high in the clouds. You can’t see much when you fly so high. When you drop yourself like that, you come to a new place. And then you can look around. Sometimes you end up in the sea and sometimes at a house or in nature. It can be everywhere. That is really fun. Eks and Mo used to walk around and told about the place and the people often. Sometimes not, on those moments Mirri was alone and she talked with the flowers or went inside a house to watch. That is also a really nice game in a house. To open all the drawers.  You can find real treasures or secret things. Old pictures or diamond earrings or lipstick.

 But uhm. Yeah. Cleaning your room. Is stupid. It’s fun to play with the suds. And to find old books back also and her other toys. And now Mirri is going to look under the bed to find her other sock that went off during playing with her toes and telling a story. Toodles!

You can read the Dutch translation here

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See you next month, than we meet Lientje. She is mad. Very mad and not afraid to show it. She calls herself a hooligan. She is pretty scary cause she makes claws of her hands. Wraaaa she shouts. Next month we meet her and listen to her story and find out that things maybe are a little bit different than they look at first hand...