Carlotta was a seven-year-old girl, living in a small town in Germany with her parents and her little brother Caspar. She was a girl with a blooming imagination who loved to wander the streets and observe. Sometimes, her dad even called her “my little daydreamer”, when she seemed to be caught in thoughts that made her forget the reality around her again.
Even on her way back from school, Carlotta always followed the same creative routines. First, she jumped out of the school door to not touch the big door threshold. She herself didn’t exactly know why – it just gave her a rewarding feeling. Just around the corner, she petted the coachman’s black stallion, when they weren’t on a tour showing tourists around the city center. Sometimes, she even fed him some of her leftover vegetables – he really loved yellow carrots. The last stop on her way home was the house of an old man called Oskar who often looked mad even though he had never been not nice to her. In his kitchen window, he had a green bubblehead that would bob its head up and down if Carlotta jumped up and down in front of it just hard enough. So that was what she did every day.She jumped as hard as she could to make the green sausage dog bob and then started laughing and dancing crazily in front of it before she finally went home for lunch.
One sunny Wednesday in March, she had just arrived at the green bubblehead and was about to start jumping when a loud drum startled her and made the sausage dog’s head nod. She felt a mixture of insecurity and anger as she turned around and saw a group of people holding signs and making noise with drums and whistles. She didn’t understand what they were doing, but she felt sad and angry, because they had ruined her play. With these feelings in her belly, she went home, threw her satchel into a corner, and sat down at the kitchen table with folded arms.
“What’s the matter my darling?”, her mum asked her.
“THEY RUINED MY PLAY”, Carlotta shouted back at her.
“Who are they?”, her mum asked while stroking her back and Carlotta started to explain what had just happened.
By the time Carlotta had told her story, her mum explained: “The people you saw are a group of activists, who demonstrate to make our city a nicer place for everybody. For example, if you want to take an official corona self-test, as we always do before visiting granny, you need to have a European passport. They are convinced that this is not fair, that it is discriminating, and they want to change it. They talked to the mayor and he always nodded and said “yes, I understand what you mean, we are going to investigate this further and come back to you” – but nothing happened afterward. They have already officially complained to the city council, but nothing changed and now they want to raise more attention by demonstrating. What I wanted to explain to you was: They didn’t want to disturb your game or even bully you.”
“Thanks for explaining this to me mummy”, Carlotta replied. As she understood that the people were demonstrating to draw attention to a topic and not just to be loud and mean, she felt a little bit guilty and made the decision to see if they would be there again on Wednesday the next week, to observe them again.
The next Wednesday, Carlotta basically ran to Oskar’s house after school and it was probably the first time she was happy that the coachman and his stallion were on a tour. When she arrived in front of Oskar’s kitchen window, she already heard the activists in the distance. As they came closer, she could see their faces. They didn’t look mean or angry at all this time, some of them she even recognized from her neighborhood. And she could really relate to what they were saying on their signs. For example, she read “No human is illegal” and although she didn’t know exactly what illegal was, she understood that it was something bad and she agreed that humans are not bad.
Turning her head a little, she realized that the green bubblehead was bobbing his head again due to the vibration of the activists’ drums. But this time, the bobbing didn’t make her feel like dancing. It even seemed like the sausage dog wasn’t really bobbing this time, but nodding at the protestants. “Just as the mayor reacted, from what mummy told me”, Carlotta said to herself, “He was nodding, but nothing changed.”
From thatday on, Carlotta’s view on the bubblehead had changed. She still took the same way home from school and sometimes she even had a little chat with Oskar when he was in the garden, but she didn’t jump in front of the bubblehead anymore. Carlotta even asked her mom if they could join the demonstration once in a while.