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Borrowed Taste
Column
Borrowed Taste
Mr. Bootblack is a philosopher with distinct views of his own. He earns a living cleaning shoes. Once every two weeks he writes an article about footwear for GDS – and about the wearers.
Maggy prefers to shine her shoes herself. That would make her a bad customer if she were indeed a customer, but Maggy is just six years old and only then sometimes accompanies her mother when she brings by her family’s shoes in a bag to me. When nobody else is there, I sit down with Maggy and we shine a pair of shoes together. Maggy thinks this is a good chance to talk about life. And I think Maggy is right. Meanwhile, her mother goes over to Tiffany’s – only to look around. “A girl can dream”, she says and when Maggy calls out “Mama, but you aren’t a girl, you are a woman”, then she just giggles – like a girl.
“Bootblack”, Maggy begins our conversation while she peers with great effort at the pair of tiny ballerina slippers on her lap, “What is a birth certificate?” And I say to her that is a piece of paper which states when a child was born. She ponders this. I know what she is thinking: The President has put his birth certificate on the Internet because a couple of his very vocal opponents have maintained that he isn’t a naturally-born American citizen. Maggy must also have heard about this because it’s already being broadcast all day long on all the news programmes.
“Bootblack”, she says after she has obviously come to a conclusion, “but one sees if a child has been born. But one sees the child!” It is the most intelligent thing which I have ever heard about this topic and it doesn’t surprise me that it has come from Maggy. The child is shrewd like a pigeon in Times Square.
I use a small tube to apply a little colour to the exterior side of the shoes which her father wears on the weekends while I ponder how I should explain to her that adults sometimes make life unnecessarily difficult. Then I say: “Do you know, Maggy, many people believe a piece of paper more than their own eyes. Many people believe only then when something has been written somewhere that it is indeed true.” She ponders this while she, with total concentration, uses a tube to apply a little red colour to her ballerina slippers. She doesn’t look satisfied with my answer. I point to the shoes in her hand. “Those are very beautiful ballerina slippers which you have there.” She nods. Then I continue: “And there is a name on the sole. Many people can only then decide whether they think the shoes are beautiful if a certain name is written on them which tells them that the shoes must be beautiful.
They don’t believe their own eyes.” Maggy suddenly looks up as if she’s gotten an idea. “Just like Donald Trump!”, she exclaims. I nod astonishingly. Trump is the loudest of the voices regarding Obama’s birth certificate. But it’s still a mystery to me how a six-year-old would know that. Maggy jumps up and points to the street below-to Tiffany’s. “He must always have his name written everywhere!” Now I know what she means. She isn’t pointing to Tiffany’s, but rather to the building next to it. Above the entrance in gold: “Trump Tower”. “He has a certain fear”, says Maggy with the clever earnestness of a shrewd six-year-old, “that he wouldn’t exist at all if his name wasn’t written everywhere.”
