sweat & scary

Sunday the sun was shining. The whole city was running the Marathon. I headed down to Giulia and Alessio to help putting a cupboard together in exchange for a big smile and an Italian lunch – yes, you guessed right - some kind of pasta.

I am getting fed up being fat. My favourite T-shirts do not fit any more. It is horrible. I will have to keep doing more fitness. After yesterday’s 1000 calories and happiness afterwards this should not be so hard though. So anyway – I ended up in the XL-section of my shelf and chose a grey T-shirt with two cartoon squirrels on it. One of them has a scarf cowboy-like covering his lower face and holds a gun towards another squirrel having no choice but to raise his hands high above his head holding a chestnut. I wore this T-shirt already a couple of times so I didn’t think anything ...Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the S-Bahn – which smelt like sweat as could be expected on a day where an average passenger has been running 16.7 kms and was on his / her way home to take a shower. An American family with three children got in. The little girl must have been around four years old and the two older boys probably around the age of 7-8. They sat down next to me into a 4-chair cell and started the usual fight for the window seat. I mean the children of course …

After a while they settled down and the boy opposite to me next to the window (yes, I got also a window seat, ha!) started to become comfortable with the situation. He was looking at me first and smiled. Then his look went down to my T-shirt. I started to become nervous at this moment as I became aware of the cartoon on my chest. The next 30 seconds were really funny and it is a pity that I have not been carrying a hidden camera inside my eyes so I could record it and show you the face of the boy. A big smile went into a sudden shock when he realized what was going on between the squirrels. And I felt awful. I thought of the innocent world I grew up and in and the world today’s children grow up in. I don’t know what effect this had on the boy but I must admit that I felt bad afterwards. I am not sure if this will change my clothing habits, we will see ...

Anyway – this reminds me of a series of photographs made by Jill Greenberg a while ago that resulted in a lot of discussions around the world. She showed little kids a candy and when they went for it, she snatched it away – forcing a reflexive crying which she then photographed. The pictures show an amazing intensity. Click here to see what I mean.