Anyone who thinks of children as sweet little angels, probably hasn’t spent much time with them, remembers little from their own childhood, or might just need their head examined. Often, such a person, already in their forties, suddenly discovers a burning desire to write books for kids. I would wholeheartedly advise against such a plan! While it might win you applause at the family table, it won’t guarantee international success. And it certainly won’t prepare you for the cruelty young pupils can sometimes inflict on a visiting author.
“Do you like to flirt with women?” a seven-year-old boy once asked.
“I do,” I answered, honestly.
“But how, in such ugly shoes?”
Or:
“How old are you?”
“Forty-five.”
“Well, congratulations, you look only forty-four-and-a-half.”
Or:
“Do you still have all your teeth?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but do you have them with you now?”
And on and on it goes….
Every encounter with young readers is like wandering through a minefield. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a “bratbomb,” and you’re gonna get blasted.
Bratbombs, like explosives and other military attacks, come in various forms: anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, as well as depth-charges and booby traps.
An armor-piercing bratbomb, one with huge destructive power, can send a shudder through the very walls of a school gymnasium, including the teachers leaning up against them—the blood of dilated capillaries rushing to their cheeks
Here are some examples:
“Do you have a lover?” an eight-year-old girl inquired.
“Let’s say that my lover is literature,” I muttered.
“But then what about your wife?” a boy cried out.
Or:
“What do you and our Polish teacher have in common?” I was once asked in the town of Jasło.
“Well, for example, we both love books.”
“You jokers!”
Or:
“Were you once a handsome man?”
Uh…
Then there’s the antipersonnel bratbomb, and its single strategic objective: to prevent the lesson from resuming. They can take the form of any question at all, if only to delay the inevitable by a few precious seconds.
Such tactics include:
“What was the title of your fourth book?”
Or:
“What was the title of your fifth book?”
Or:
“What was the title of your sixth book?”
Or:
“What was the title of your seventh book?”
…and so on.
Depth-charge bratbombs, in turn, are unleashed for the sheer pleasure of watching them detonate and wreak havoc. As a side-effect, they make an adult victim keenly aware of the common misconception that there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. Stupid questions can be devastating, leaving much destruction in their wake.
These include:
“Are you wearing clean…or dirty…underwear?” Such a bratbomb is usually accompanied by choking laughter, making it hard to breathe, articulation difficult.
Or:
“Are your…your socks…smelly?”
Or:
…perhaps I’ve made my point.
This brings us to the most dangerous type of bratbomb—the booby trap. The damage they’ll do is never clear, their effects become evident long after the dust settles.
For example:
“How much is seven times eight?” a first-grader in my Warsaw neighborhood once took me off guard. “Fifty-six,” I responded automatically.
“Thanks!” he shouted, overjoyed.
“You did my homework!”
Or:
“Is it true that a boutonnière is the name for the special hole in a jacket?” a blonde girl sitting next to her teacher once whispered.
“For the little flower arrangement? Well, yes,” I replied, “that’s what it’s called.”
“I know that, but can you believe our teacher didn’t know?!”
Or:
“Is what you wrote in your book about your childhood true?” a pupil at a primary school in Kraków wanted to know.
“It is,” I responded.
“Even this?” he asked, then recited: “To relieve the tension, I showed my pee-pee to one of my cousins, Jola”—and later decided that I could end my adventure with girls for the time being.
As you can see, booby trap bratbombs are the most lethal.
Children love to ambush adults, and adults in turn love to watch their peers squirm in the snare of a child’s question. So, what’s the conclusion? That grown-ups are kids too, only bigger. That’s the only difference. We can all be spiteful or cruel; sometimes mean or cynical; and none too averse to the bittersweet taste of destruction. And, speaking of destroying things… It’s sometimes nice to smash an empty bottle against the sidewalk, throw a rock through the window of a deserted building, or “accidentally” burst the branded balloons with an event sponsor’s logo.
Perhaps not. Przekrój readers are adults, after all. Let’s instead propose a lighter form of wreaking havoc, like popping bubble-wrap, kicking dandelions, or smashing the sweet layer of caramel atop a crème brûlée.
That feels good, right?
Children know how to wreck things without remorse. Grown-ups often pay for these urges with a guilty conscience. Maybe the antidote for destruction is reconstruction, abandoning curiosity in the “what ifs,” and simply reconciling with the “what already is.”
I was commissioned to write about what children would most like to destroy, if only given the chance. So I met with the oldest pupils at a preschool in the town of Płock, I talked to second graders in Bydgoszcz, and consulted with fourth graders at a school in my native Białystok. I took the chance to exchange a few words with my youngest neighbors in Warsaw (boys, aged three, five, and six). The results of these meetings were disappointing, because they were predictable—and I humbly take the blame. My approach was probably flawed: a simple conversation (what a research method!). In a dialogue, one can, put forward conclusions, prompt certain answers, impose ways of thinking…
And yet, I tried my very best not to do so. Nevertheless, the vast majority of those I asked (according to my untrained calculations, more than ninety percent of my kid subjects) declared that, if they could destroy anything, they would most like to blow up their school. The remaining ten percent showed mercy to these learning spaces, simply because they were still too young to actually attend one. Within this group, the results were indeed quite astounding, but as they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, it is hard to draw any more general conclusions.
One preschooler dreamed of getting rid of his little sister. Another wanted to dispose, once and for all, of all doctors’ tongue depressors. One girl mentioned her great dislike for a certain pair of sandals she’d bought in the summer. My three-year-old neighbor declared that he would most eagerly destroy the thing that frightens his mother the most.
“And what is your mom so afraid of?” I asked, at the same time sensing that I was crossing the boundaries of neighborly discretion.
“Calories!” came the reply.
This, in turn, I recognized as a pre-eminent example of what’s called a disarming bratbomb.
Translated by Daniel J. Sax
This translation was re-edited for context and accuracy on December 15, 2022.
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