I keep few objects from my childhood. It is normal. when you are little you can’t imagine future nostalgias. And, although I am the older sister, that is, the one who does not break things, I have had two brothers with the right of destruction that grants that there is no no one behind expecting to inherit it. To this we must add the purifying effect of the successive removals. The first, the one in which you leave the family home, is the most merciless since the desire to start something new and your own prevails over sentimentality and you leave behind objects that you will miss some time later.
That’s why I keep as a small treasure one of the few survivors: a desk calendar It was a birthday present. I seem to remember, although perhaps I’m making it up, that my father, who was a commercial salesman, brought it back from one of his trips. The calendar is made up of three wooden dice of two centimeters on each side. Two of them have numbers on their faces and the third shows the days of the week. Saturday and Sunday share one of the faces of the dice. The three dice are lined up in a small box open at the top, so that each day you have to take them out and put the corresponding date. It is decorated with a metal figurine of a Disney character, about 10 centimeters tall. A figurine whose choice and possible message continue to intrigue me even today.
Because my sister, whose birthday is three days before me, also received a calendar like this, with the Daisy Duck figurine. My figurine is also a Disney character: the big bad wolf from ‘The Three Little Pigs’.
Every time I look at it I can’t help but think: why the big bad wolf? I leave out the question of which manufacturer comes up with the wolf to decorate their calendars. Although, well, one sold it. I return to my questions. Why the big bad wolf? Did my father see something fierce in me too and thought that this little figure identified me? Or maybe he, a beleaguered salesman, didn’t look closely and thought it was a little dog in a hat? A very fierce little dog, it must be said, since, under the hat, his menacing expression is appreciated and he has his arms on his hips about to take a breath ready to tear down the house of one of the little pigs.
No, It wasn’t a puppy, it was the big bad wolf. My big bad wolf Every morning, when I changed the wooden dice to put the date, the wolf greeted me with his badass look. AND little by little I began to look at him with different eyes. Which meant that I also began to look at the little pigs with different eyes. With those of the wolf. And I understood the story differently. I understood that, in reality, what the wolf was hungry and that I needed to eat those little pigs, that, in addition to looking a bit idiotic to me, they looked more and more appetizing.
Quite an early lesson in how perspective works in a story.
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Wasn’t it like that in many of the animal documentaries what did we see on tv? Behind it was a script, a dramaturgy, therefore, also a perspective. According to how they told us the images, they made us support the sweet, tender and beautiful gazelle who fled from predators or we worried that the lionesses would not catch it, and the sweet, cute, beautiful lion cubs might starve, leaving the sweet, cute, beautiful gazelle turning into juicy meat. The gazelle had its reasons, to survive. The lions had their reasons, to survive. The perspective would determine who was the protagonist of the story.
Later would come readings, more or less brainy reflections in this regard, studies, experience and recognition that one of the essential and difficult decisions when telling a story, which will set the tone, the character, the protagonists of the novel is the perspective, that you do not start writing from the novel is true until you know from where it is being told. But the first lesson was given to me by the ferocious wolf of the calendar that I now have on a shelf in my study. I do not change the dice to know the date, but I have left them resting on my birthday. From time to time I look at him and ask him if he has anything else to tell me, because the lesson on perspective was very good, but… why a ferocious wolf?