The History of Bedtime Stories and More Chapter 1: Tomek and Me

 

"I thought I'd write this story today," I said to Tomek. "

Don't you know who Tomek is? True. I haven't told you about him yet. Well, I'm a young man, or at least many people think I am. I'm 20 years old. I live in Gdynia. Outside my window, you can see a kindergarten across the street. When the kindergarten kids aren't on the playground, many other young people from my neighborhood come here eager to play. I met Tomek there once. He was 8 years old. He also had a younger brother, who was 4 years old. They made an incredibly close-knit group, with the older brother taking very good care of his younger family member. You could even say he was behaving in a somewhat mature way.

"Nothing happened!" he said, waving his hand.

How sweet. Only young people can accept the failure to fulfill a promise with such calm. Adults would be furious: "You promised me! You cheated on me!" You said you'd do it tomorrow!

Meanwhile, Tomuś didn't hold any grudges against me. Childhood has only its advantages, not maturity, with its pros and cons. No wonder Peter Pan fled to the land of eternal immaturity.

I didn't mention it. Oh, I'm such a klutz. I became very close friends with Tomuś. I could even call it love. Yes, I'm sure of it. It's hard not to fall in love with such a wonderful little boy. I think he reciprocated the feeling. I can boldly call it friendship. It's the most beautiful kind of love. I still remember part of our first, very long conversation. I remember well how we talked about friendship then.

"I don't believe in true friendship. You know, in my opinion, there's nothing perfect in this world. Besides, people are selfish and at the most dangerous moment, they'll think about themselves and their own affairs, not their friends. There's a fairy tale...

Do you think I'm talking about too serious matters with a child?" Ask your children, or if children are reading this, let them ask their parents if this isn't a bit too serious. I know what they'll say. But children are very smart, much smarter than adults. Why is that? It's hard to say, maybe because it's the beginning of life and everything seems so simple and logical, only later, as we get older, we start to complicate things. Believe me, children are smarter than adults. And Tomeczek was well on his way to holding on to that wisdom from his youth for as long as possible, and that made me very happy. I noticed something else even then. He never interrupted me. Even if I spoke slowly, he waited for me to finish. I know because I speak chaotically, sometimes I go through several ideas, and people chime in mid-sentence, like, "You're wrong." But let's get back to that first conversation.

"You're probably right," he said in that calm, sweet voice of his.

And then he added,

"Maybe we'll become true friends, huh? I think you and I could be the kind of friends who would always love each other, no matter what happened. Good or bad. What do you think? Such a

mature confession at our first meeting. Incredible. I'll never fully understand the perfection that childhood holds. Perhaps because my childhood had already been stained by a mature body and age.

So we decided to face the whole world and become true friends. I didn't know then what awaited me. How could I have known that we were in for not only a test of friendship, but also a great adventure. More than one, at that.

But enough of this reminiscing; I have to listen to what my friend says next:

"Anyway, I don't want a story anymore," he finished.

"No?!?" I was surprised. (In time, I'd get used to not being surprised by his reaction, and I always thought nothing would surprise me about people anymore, but I was wrong; children were always surprising me.)

"Paint a comic book.

Oh no. " I probably won't tell him my comic book idea from high school. Besides, I don't have any talent for painting, but I do have ideas. Sometimes you just don't have the inspiration. Maybe I'll tell him about it someday. But right now, I was suffering from a lack of inspiration.

"Let's watch some cartoons. It's worth getting to know the stories of bedtime stories. Do you know what great cartoons I, your parents, and my parents used to watch on TV?"

He didn't know. I didn't know exactly either, but I decided to plunge into the world of cartoons (not just TV ones) with him and get to know it better. Finally, I had someone to talk to. I didn't know Tomek had a secret of his own.