15 Sunny Winter Minutes

“Shake it. You get what is written in Heaven for it"

It was sarcastic, and as it was pronounced in the native language, the two sentences rhymed. The two greasy laborers who said it loudly, laughed at the wiggling mannered young man who upon hearing it, turned his head back, looked at them, smiled and went on his way. I thought it was funny although it meant to be derogatory. So, it was sarcastic, rhymed, funny and derogatory.

I was waiting on the sidewalk in that sunny winter morning.

I went inside the auto accessories shop and asked the technician how long they needed more to finish the installation of the car seat cover. He said around 15 minutes.

The commercial street was crowded with cars and shoppers. The two laborers were still standing across the street and watching the passersby.

A car parked a few meters away and a thin bald man got out and entered a nearby store. I immediately recognized my old neighbor. Our families lived close to each other for ages, but we almost never spoke except when we were in the preparatory school and I wanted to join the scout team in which he was a member. It was weird that we knew each other that long without being even on speaking terms. I always found he had an unwelcoming attitude that discouraged me from striking up a conversation with him. He might have had the same view on me.

My sister used to find him so handsome that she named her first son after him. His look dramatically changed along the years though. She recently let me know, in her usual updating news of family, friends and acquaintances that she read his obituary in the newspaper.

Back to those sunny moments in the busy street, my neighbor, whom I did not know then would pass away prematurely, went out of the shop and got into his car. Our eyes met and we pretended as usual we did not know each other.

"Shake it. You get what is written in Heaven for it" echoed in my mind addressed by the two car grease smeared guys to their smiling seemingly unoffended target. It was then when someone came out of the shop and said "The car is ready".

Thousands of Afternoons Ago IV

The second day after I arrived in Vichy, I decided to change the hotel. It was far from the school and far from the other hotels or rooms in which the students, I have already met, were staying.  I walked the streets until I found a nearby hotel with reasonable rates. It was owned by an old provincial couple. The wife did not seem particularly friendly, and I thought maybe if it was not for the many empty rooms in the hotel, she would have gladly refused to accept me. I guessed she might have had a previous bad experience with foreign students who flooded the city every year. It might have been something else. I did not know.

The teacher of my morning classes was an attractive tall and slim lady in her early forties. Short black hair and black eyes. She would be nice and smiling, and in a second would swing mood and become tempered. In her good moments she would sing and ask us about the songs we loved. She would even flirt discreetly with one specific guy in the class. In her bad moments, we would become silent like hushed up kids in the kindergarten.

In general I won’t feel very comfortable if a moody person approached my close circle. I try to avoid unpredictable people. With Marie Francoise, we had the normal healthy distance between a teacher and a student, so I did not care much about her swinging moods. I even liked her, maybe because I found her character interesting, or because I liked (and still like) people who sing to themselves without caring much who might or might not listen (A dentist I visited recently kept singing while he was checking my teeth. I was amused and did not feel disturbed).

It was the peak of summer and heat was bearable though, compared to the sun in my hometown. And Joyce Sim's Coming Into My Life and Princess Erika's Trop de Bla Bla were constantly aired on the waves.