Les Kelloucq en voyage

About a week ago, a rumor started at school. There is a “dame blanche” (a white lady) living in the girls’ bathroom. If you get into a specific stall and lock the door, terrible things will happen to you. Parents quickly heard about it because some children started having nightmares. The teachers had to reassure their class. Emmanuel clearly dismisses the whole thing, but you can tell that Gabriel is not so sure. He does not seem to be afraid (after all, this is all happening in the girls’ bathroom), but his brain can’t quite dispel the idea that it might be true. It reminded me that a few years ago, a young friend of Emmanuel’s who lives in another part of Paris told him about a “dame blanche” who presumably stands on road corners and leads drivers off the road…Because it was only one kid saying it instead of a whole school gossiping about it, the tale did not get much traction with him.

 

It is quite interesting that these stories keep emerging, carried underground by generations of kids and resurfacing from time to time. A quick Internet search shows that this white lady pops up in many countries, complete with her own Wikipedia entry and Dailymotion videos (a French YouTube lok-alike). I guess kids and adults do love to scare themselves or rather to embody their fears into something “concrete”. When I was in primary school in my hometown of Châtellerault, we walked to school and we had a choice of a “chemin long” and a “chemin court”, a long and a short way. The short way was cursed with a sort of haunted house, a little manor sitting back on a large lawn hidden behind tall walls and a usually closed door. We were convinced that there lived a monster of some sort, an oger I am pretty sure we called it. So nothing new here.

 

What is new, and this is a bit of different story or maybe not, is that I started walking to school alone probably around the age of 7 or 8 (Dad, correct me if you are reading this and I am wrong). Emmanuel is about to turn 10 and he is still not walking to school by himself even though the walk is shorter and straighter. The boys walk part of the way alone every morning now and Emm comes back by himself one afternoon a week when his brother has an activity at school. So what are we parents afraid of? The urban bogeyman, the meany who is going to grab our children, the pervert and the sick, our own kids playing hokey. Come on, it is a very short walk with other kids and parents every step of the way! Maybe I should send the boys off by themselves this morning and for the next and last two weeks of school.