M. Beisenherz: Sorry, I’m here privately
Tantrum at checkout 3: Let your inner child run wild
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Our columnist has always been a balancing person. But sometimes he would like to rage like a four-year-old at the supermarket checkout.
By Micky Beisenherz
Sociotope supermarket. Recently it was that time again: like a behavioral scientist, a Konrad Lorenz from the cheese counter, I was allowed to witness the fascinating spectacle when a screaming four-year-old his Mother bullies. Like a fish out of water, he slowly pushed his way between the shelves in the direction of, yes, where did he actually want to go? Even what he wanted couldn’t really be heard in the screaming and howling. But he gave the impression of being interested in sweets.
It was clear that the mother was considering several options: 1. Immobilize the little one with a targeted blow with the baguette. 2. Respond to the terrorist’s demand with a family pack of Toffifee. 3. Run away and hope that the short one hasn’t kept the address of his parents’ house.
I was jealous of the child
Meanwhile, the boy in the down jacket crawled screaming on the floor towards checkout number 3. Many bystanders felt sorry for the mother – I, on the other hand, was jealous of the child. On this ability to give in so drastically to one’s own feeling of dissatisfaction. At what point exactly do we begin to coat our childish joy of expression with labels until there is nothing left of it? Bubbling happiness, exuberant anger – everything is somehow filled up. Almost a bit of a shame. Don’t all the advice books tell us that we just have to give our inner child enough space?
In one of his sensational books, the actor and author Joachim Meyerhoff remembers how as a child he was called “the blonde bombshell” because of his tantrums. This predisposition would also break out again and again later on. About the moment he vented his displeasure about his mother’s new love – and dismantled her new husband’s carport with a verve that would have impressed even Jens Lehmann. The former national goalkeeper is a final icon of self-indulgence. With the spirit of an eight-year-old, he imposes his will, drives under the barrier in the parking garage, steals a fan’s glasses and uses the chainsaw when something blocks his view.
Then you get a little wet-eyed and briefly look away from the two-hour YouTube collage with Klaus Kinski’s most beautiful tickers. A German cult lunatic who many people still admire today, not because of his “acting skills”, but because he shouted so wonderfully behind the scenes and threw things.
As a child, I was also blonde, but not a bombshell. As a five-year-old, I managed what children with tantrums tried to regulate with the convincing charm of a local SPD club chairman. Probably quite successful: Mom still answers when I call to this day.
Here I am a child, here I can be
Nothing has changed for me in this way of dealing with other people. Only: in traffic, in the car, I am able to let out everything that etiquette, etiquette and the corset of social values have forced upon us over the years. In the passenger compartment I am something that sometimes only partially resembles a human being. Honking, cursing, body language. Here I am a child, here I can be.
If you’re looking for me: Tomorrow I’ll be raging on the floor in front of checkout 3. I’ll even put on a good suit.