(...)
Jongen (waarvan ik de naam vergeten ben): So where do you come from?
Melanie: Belgium
Jongen: Oh, nice. So you speak French?
Melanie: (Tsk. Voor de zoveelste keer.) No, Dutch.
Jongen: Oh what a coincidence! I had a strange dream last week, really. I dreamt that I was reborn as a Dutch boy.
Melanie: What a coincidence!
Jongen: Really. A wild dream it was. And it felt so great, you know, being a Dutch boy.
Melanie: How did it feel?
Jongen: I don’t know. I only remember that I was very poor and I was living on the countryside and it stank there.
Melanie: (Oh God. Ik moet echt zorgen dat hij blijft doorgaan.) Yes, Belgium countryside stinks.
Jongen: But that didn’t matter because I was really happy there.
Melanie: (Judith! Concentreer je. Zorg vooral dat hij niet ophoudt) Oh, that’s nice. So how did you look in your dream? Were you blond?
Jongen: YES! I was! How did you know that?
Melanie: I don’t know, I just thought you might have been blond.
Jongen: Oh.
(...)
Jongen: But you know what was most interesting about my dream?
Melanie: No?
Jongen: It was set in the 1920s.
Melanie: That’s really interesting! What would that mean?
Jongen: I think it means that I was a Dutch boy in a former life.
Melanie: Oh! Waaaw! And do you think that you will be reborn again after this life? (Hahaha! Ik houd het haast niet meer.)
Jongen: Yes, I believe so.
Melanie: I wonder in what country you would be reborn.
Jongen: I don’t know. But I’ll calculate it. I need a globe for that.
Melanie: Let me know if you’ve calculated it.
Jongen: I will.
(...)
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3 comments:
Dear Melanie,
Being a former Dutch boy, and a clever one, I've figured out where I can spend my next life in the best conditions. After some dreams in which I explored and compared various opportunities, I decided to be reborn on the Isle of Nantucket, which is about 30 miles (48.3 km) south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the United States. There I'll be married to the greatgreatgranddaughter of Nan, now a very old Nanny (in fact she must be a one hundred and teenager). That Nan not only ran away with a man, but also took her father's bucket, as was reported more than ninety years ago in the following limerick originally published in The Princeton Tiger:
There was an old man of Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket;
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
Googling around on the internet I discovered that the contents of that same bucket have been multiplied thousands of times, so I wouldn't dream of spending my next life anywhere else or marrying anybody else than the greatgreatgranddaughter of Nan. So, farewell, dear Melanie, and
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire,
now and then remember me, who will be a young guy at that time, enjoying his dolce far niente in Nantucket, but even in wealth and opulence not satisfied and therefore time and again thinking of you. May I suggest that we both, separated by age and the waves of the Atlantic, in distant togetherness then sometimes
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Your faithfully,
The former Dutch boy whose name you seem to have forgotten.
O jee Melanie, waar hebben we onze prijs voor 'mooiste post ooit'
gelaten?
Dear former dutch boy,
I did not forget your name.
(However much you dislike it.)
Melanie
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