Читать книгу Hector Finds Time - Francois Lelord - Страница 8

EVERY so often, children also came to see Hector, and, when they did, of course it was their parents who had decided to send them.

The children who came to see Hector weren’t really ill – it was more that their parents found them difficult to understand, or else they were children who were too sad, too scared or too excitable. One day, he talked to a little boy who, funnily enough, was called Hector, just like him. Little Hector was very bored at school, and time seemed to go by too slowly for him. So he didn’t listen, and he ended up with bad marks.

Big Hector asked Little Hector, ‘Right now, what do you wish for most in the world?’

Little Hector didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘To become a grown-up straight away!’

Hector was surprised. He had expected Little Hector’s answer to be: ‘For my parents to get back together’, or ‘To get better marks at school’, or ‘To go on a school ski trip with my friends’.

So he asked Little Hector why he wanted to become a grown-up straight away.

‘To decide things!’ said Little Hector.

If he became a grown-up straight away, explained Little Hector, he could decide for himself what time to go to bed, when to wake up and where he could spend his holidays. He could see the friends he wanted, have fun doing what he wanted and not see grown-ups he didn’t want to see (like his father’s new girlfriend). He would also have a real job, because going to school wasn’t a real job. Besides, you didn’t choose to go to school and then you spent hours, days, years watching time passing slowly and getting bored.

Hector thought that Little Hector had let his imagination run away with him about life as a grownup: after all, grown-ups still had to do things they didn’t like doing, and see people they didn’t like seeing. But he didn’t tell Little Hector that, because he thought that, for the moment, it was a good thing that Little Hector was dreaming of a happy future, since his present was not that happy.

So he asked Little Hector, ‘But if you became a grownup straight away, it would mean that you’d already lived for a good few years, so you’d have fewer left to live. Wouldn’t that bother you?’

Little Hector thought it over. ‘Okay, it’s a bit like a video game when you lose an extra life. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t stop you having fun.’ Then he looked at Hector. ‘What about you? Would it bother you to have already lost one or two lives?’

Big Hector thought that Little Hector might become a psychiatrist himself one day.