Excerpts from
Albert
By Ole Lund Kirkegaard
From the
very day Albert was born, he began to grow and, since that time, he has grown a
little every day.
Albert grew bigger and bigger.
Albert’s father was very proud of
Albert. Almost every day, he measured
him with a measuring tape and, after every time he measured him, he stuck his
head out the window and shouted:
HURRAH. Albert has grown some more.
And the people in Kalleby stuck their
big, nosy heads out of their windows and doors to hear who was shouting.
But when they heard it was Albert’s
father shouting something about Albert, they just looked at each other and
said:
UGH! As if that were something to brag
about.
Yeah, ugh, said old Mrs. Stampe.
In all the 97 years I have lived in this
forsaken town, there has never been a boy who did not grow bigger and
naughtier.
And, so, she and all the other people
pulled their nosy heads back inside and slammed their doors with a loud bang.
Fortunately, it was only in the beginning
that Albert’s father could measure Albert.
When Albert grew somewhat bigger and
wilder, his father could no longer hold him down and that was rather lucky.
For if Albert’s father had kept on
shouting about how much Albert had grown, the people in Kalleby would probably
have become very angry with him.
But Albert
knew nothing about all this.
He just grew and, as he grew, he learned
a lot of things.
In the beginning, when he was so little
that he could almost fit in his father’s coat pocket, he did nothing but sleep
and squall and suckle milk from his mother.
But that did not last long, because he learned to spit mashed potatoes
all the way over to the other side of the table.
Nor did it take long before he learned to eat newspaper.
He could eat almost an entire newspaper – if
his mother was not looking. He also
learned that you should not eat soft soap or copper pennies, even though
they were shiny.
When he grew a little bigger, he learned
to sit on the potty without falling off and to say: GOO, GOO, GAGA.
And when he grew even bigger, he learned to
pick his nose and to shout in a terribly loud voice.
One day, Albert got some teeth and, that
very day, he crawled under the table and bit his Aunt Magna on the leg.
Aunt Magna, who was big and round and very
talkative, always used to tousle Albert’s head and say he was such a sweet
little boy and he would probably grow up to be mayor one day.
But that day, she forgot all about
tousling Albert’s head and telling him that he would grow up to be mayor.
Instead, she dropped her coffee cup and
jumped up on the chair, so it creaked, and from there, she shouted in a very
angry voice that Albert would probably grow up to be a scamp.
And about that, Aunt Magna was
certainly right.
Translated by Russell Dees
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