What Do Glue-Eaters Dream Of?

Paris, sixth district : welcome to the most exclusive daycare you’ve never heard of. Just 300 square feet of cozy plush — all little nooks, play forts, cushions on bright tatami mats. Here’s a temple of pretend kitchens and toy stoves. Here, the future ruling class learns, before your amazed eyes, how to sit on the potty — one joyful, communal squat at a time. Amen.

Eleven toddlers, just two years old, sit with their teacher around a soft-edged table beneath a miniature climbing wall. Today’s activity: Splashy Play — aka hands in water, make it go splish-splash. It’s alternative education, baby. The teacher lathers up a big green soap bar, gets the water in her basin nice and foamy. Then she passes it around so each kid can make a bubble bath in their own bowl — for Buzz Lightyear, Sophie the Giraffe, and a HotWheels car missing all four wheels.

The kids all look like French New Wave film actors who’ve been tumble-dried. They babble with delight, loud and drooly, sounding uncannily like post-stroke Belmondo.

At the back of the room, a nineteen-year-old intern in "symbolical shadowing mode" is slowly morphing, limb by limb, into a houseplant. Her brain is visibly leaking out of her ears in pink foam.

Then suddenly — from deep within the teacher — a Voice of Wisdom rises. This voice will forever stamp their barely-formed little brains with the archetype of Knowledge, of Divine Transmission. And yet… what’s this? She's speaking to them like they’re gum-stained rags dragged in from the sidewalk.

“It’suh big bubboool foamuhhhh. Fffffffffhh!”

She blows on her pile of bubbles. The kids shriek in ecstasy, arms in the air. All except one. A fluffy blob of foam has landed on his upper lip like a mustache. Shock. Outrage. Shame.

His name’s Gabin. With his black bowl cut, little overalls, and flour-colored foam mustache, he looks like a tiny village baker. His stunned expression — part wonder, part holy fury — casts an eerie hush over the room.

“Lookit the lil’ ones!” the teacher chirps. “Feuny Gabin’s got a beard like Senta Clauze!”

But Gabin isn’t listening. He’s drifting… pulled by a mysterious force into the pit of human consciousness. A massive, cosmic feeling triggered by the smell of soap floods his tiny being. He sniffs hard, REALLY hard — sucking up a generous amount of foam into his sinuses.

That soap bar is none other than “Grand Northern Pine,” bestseller from the esteemed Maison des Saponides.

A rush of memories — vivid, surreal — hits little Gabin’s mind like a lightning bolt. Standing on his chair, he seems possessed. All it took was a single smell to awaken the buried memories of a past life:

“Yea, transfigured was I by the odor exhaled from that viridescent ichor — and lo! I did remember the being I once wast! My name never was Gabin, but rather —

Werner « der Schwarze Reiter » Von Bübbels, dread knight of the Northern Host, scourge of heretics and wolves alike.

Within that glistening saponide, trapped like a shard of alpine wind, I found my soul’s cryptex opened. It drew me from the tomb of slumber and cast me, shrieking, into this infant’s form.

What enchantment is this, which bathes the sinews of my feeble frame in echoes of thundering hoofbeats? Aye — I remember it now — I rode with fury atop Dunkel, my night-black charger with rubescent eyes that saw into men's sins. The lash of my frost-whipped hair upon my brow! The shrill howl of the north wind! And the dread I knew — that beasts infernal pursued me, their limbs beating against mine iron blade as thunder upon a church bell.”

The teacher, now worried, rushes to Gabin. His face flickers between spoiled-milk white and furious-piggy red. To her trained eye, there’s no doubt — the kid’s about to soil himself. Shame. Rage.

“Oh you petit chimpanzee, Gabin! We gotta change your diapee, huh? You made a steenky poopy!”

She turns to the class, voice rising in a ridiculous crescendo that flirts with glass-shattering pitches:

“Grab your blankies, everyone, in twooo minute, kiddos, it’s gonna be time to change your diapees!”

As she starts to lift Gabin off his chair, he — defiant — attempts to speak:

“Aaahhhbrrrr…”

A bubble of drool pops out of his mouth.

Oh, the mysterious tangle of thoughts — so vast, so complex — that toddlers struggle to express at times like these:

“Yon screeching hag, who calleth herself ‘Mistress,’ I strove to utter unto her the fullness of truth. I wouldst have cried out: ‘I am the Schwarze Reiter! I, Werner Von Bübbels, do not soil mine breeches as some base knave!’

I would have spoken thus — but alas! My lips, my tongue, my jaw, all failed me, shackled by this cursed shell of infancy.

Yet lo — my noble peers understood. Their flatulent hymns and nasal psalms bespoke a hidden language: ‘Werner, we know thy wrath. Thy mucus and thy bubbles — they are our Latin, our birthright. Glory to the Most High!’

And so, as once I bore my name with honor, riding forth at the helm of a sanctified militia through the swampy lands of unbelief, I shall now take command of this nursery.”

Gabin grabs the soap and waves it aloft like a relic of Holy Wars. The other children pause — foam forgotten. With his white mustache and crimson cheeks, Gabin looks every inch the prophet-warrior. The toddlers — eyes wide — suddenly hear the classroom’s rules for what they really are: tyranny.

They rise.

“Take up thy forks, thy rattles, thy molded plastic sabers, o comrades of small stature! Let us wage holy battle till this foul dusk runs red with the blood of our oppressive masters!”

Gabin bolts. The toddlers overturn water buckets, shriek, and brandish plastic spoons, salt dough, and diapers like sacred weapons.

“One, two, three — I’M GONNA USE MY BIGUE VOOOOICE! Screugneugneu!”

The teacher frantically scans the room for the intern, still singing:

“One, two, three, everybody sit down…”

But alas — the intern has completed her plant transformation. Potted. Cornered.

Cornered herself now, the teacher switches tactics — rough voice, slightly theatrical, calls forth a spell:

“Sabrina, I’m at my wits' end here. Can you please take care of Gabin’s big tantrum? Ohhh la la.”

Sabrina’s soul — suddenly infused with purpose — returns from the void. She drags her lanky body to the center of the room, eyes locked on her target. She snatches Gabin mid-revolt, lifting him like a carry-on bag.

“We got this, Sabri’ girl. You’re almost there.”

But no! Halfway through the mission, the spell weakens. Her stomach growls. She's thinking about her McDonald’s lunch break, the park, a nap… and misses the one crucial detail: Gabin still has the soap.

Before the teacher can intervene, he raises the green bar to his mouthful of baby teeth.

“Yea, it was mine own self — Werner — who didst ride through fire and snow. I beheld once more the verdant slopes of the Holy Mountains. I saw the Titans, still shouldering this cursed orb. I felt again the bite of frozen sweat, the sting of steel, the sacred blood of thine Adversary.

Thou art what thou eatest — du bist was du isst — spake the Saxon innkeeper of old. So did I plunge my fangs into the emerald slime, this verdant soapstone, to bind within my marrow the sacred memory of the life I once wielded by sword.

I am Werner Von Bübbels still. And I am eternal.”

By the time the teacher pries open his mouth, it’s too late. Gabin lets out a soapy burp. His face bears the satisfied look of a gladiator who’s won — but at great cost, after a long night of battle.

“Oooh! That’s magic!”

The other kids chant, starry-eyed. They all want to eat the green soap now, drink the bubbly water by the pint. Tables are overturned. The kids huddle behind them while Sabrina — more alive than ever — starts cleaning up the apocalyptic mess. McDonald’s will have to wait ‘til 2 p.m. now.

That evening, while lighting his second cigarette with the butt of the first, Dr. Henry Guez — pediatrician to the upper crust — reassures Gabin’s parents:

“No no no, really, it’s nothing. Peanuts. Won’t hurt more than a little punch to the throat.

Relax, mom and dad. Adult or not — we all eat a little soap. Every day. Tap water, dishes, whatever.

“Now glue-eaters? Or kids who eat actual crap? That’s a problem.”

He ends with a knowing wink and a belly laugh too disturbing to decode, while Gabin, mysteriously blessed beyond his upbringing, swordfights with a stolen stethoscope. German syllables snarl from his little mouth, guttural sounds that defy his French DNA or his “expected” cognitive stage.

Which makes you wonder:

What ancient dreams, what buried lives stir in the souls of all those kids — across the world — who one day, in a moment of weakness… ate glue. Or poop.