Kindersitze
27 April 2009, 2:38 p.m.
49° 19' 11.11" N, 8° 26' 4.49" E
While the rest of us have been enjoying an immense and immersive swim with the dolphins in the Imax Dome, Lambert has been doing some online searching (on my laptop, of course, using the Museum’s surprisingly expensive Wi-Fi), and he’s found something very interesting, which he’s eager to share with me after the movie.
“So what’d you find out?” I say.
“I have learned many things,” he says. “But first, there’s something important... ”
He minimizes a window as I approach. I grin and shake my head.
“Lambert, Lambert... ” I say.
But then I realize he’s not hiding something from me, he’s hiding it from Bertha. He waits a minute, until Conrad takes off running toward some antique fire wagons, Feuerwehr-somethings, and Bruno chases behind him. Bertha takes a few steps in their direction, and watches tolerantly as the three-year-old kid and the thirty-year-old monk play hide-and-seek among the wire wheels of the old red trucks.
Once Bertha’s back is turned, Lambert opens the window on my laptop. It’s YouTube, with the sound off. He’s watching the Pope’s video, with closed captions in German, the one where Gregory asks his boss—that would be St. Peter, up in heaven, if you’re not familiar with the organization chart of the Catholic Church—for permission to excommunicate Henry. Apparently Lambert has never seen it before, and it has him kinda agitated. I, on the other hand, have already seen this YouTube at least a dozen times, not to mention all the spinoff memes and the related content, such as the Auto-Tune parody of Henry’s original drunken voice mail—the one where he tried to fire Gregory and basically kicked the Investiture Controversy into high gear—so I just try to keep Lambert calm and get him back on task.
“That’s the world we live in,” I say. “It’s no secret. The Pope says Henry’s a heathen, and nobody has to obey him. Gregory doesn’t quite come out and say that the German princes have a Christian duty to rebel, but… close.”
I can’t tell whether Lambert is excited or upset by that idea. So I steer the conversation in another direction.
“So... what about those German child safety laws?” I say. “Remember? The stuff I asked you to research?”
And it turns out that Lambert has five other browser tabs open, and he’s discovered that those laws are very strict indeed. I’m impressed by his skills—I mean, for an 11th-century monk, he really has a good sense of what to trust and what not to trust on the Internet. In fact, this improves my opinion of his original historical work—after seeing the way he avoids the bullshit and zeros in on the reliable content, how could I doubt, for example, his story of the murder of Godfrey the Hunchback, which some historians have called sensational and melodramatic. Anyway, the bottom line is that passengers younger than 12 years of age and less than 150 centimeters tall must be strapped into an EU-approved child restraint system. A kindersitz.
And Conrad, I realize, is exactly the kind of Kind that the German lawmakers had in mind. He’s three years old and what, maybe 92, 93 cm tall? Normally I’m terrible at thinking in metric units, but back when I was married and we were fixing up the house, I had this measuring stick with a yard on one side and a meter on the other, this antique from the Carter administration—it had this slogan on it, Get Ready for Metric!—and I liked to carry this stick around and point it and twirl it and measure everything in centimeters and millimeters, as if we were living in some alternate universe, where Ronald Reagan had never been elected and the USA had long ago converted to the metric system. My wife found the joke funny the first day and after that it drove her crazy, which was, for me, the point. So I’m pretty good at guessing the height and length of things in centimeters, if the thing isn’t more than one meter long. Or tall.
When everyone is back at the minivan I share Lambert’s findings with the rest of our group, and I tell them that our Number One Priority is to find a child seat, a good kindersitz for Conrad. I’m expecting 100% support for this initiative, because it is so totally obvious that this is the main thing we need to do before we get back on the autobahn, so I’m kinda surprised when Bruno starts giving me a hard time. He’s saying that contemporary laws shouldn’t apply to Conrad, who is after all the Duke of Lower Lotharingia, not to mention the son of the Kaiser. I’m about to say look, being a Duke isn’t going to protect Conrad in an accident, but then I see that Bertha is beaming, absolutely beaming at Bruno’s remarks, and finally I get what’s going on with Bruno. He’s just trying to impress Bertha.
Okay, I’m going to have to make an executive decision on my own. I tell them this is a no-vote issue. If Conrad is going to ride in my minivan, he’s going to use a car seat. An EU-approved kindersitz. No more questions. That’s the way it’s going to be.
So now I’m driving past the cathedral again, looking for a Neckermann’s store around here someplace that’s supposed to have a huge selection of kindersitze....
And here we’re in the aisle at Neckermann’s. There’s a perfectly good, completely certified, EU-approved car seat for 90 euros. Some brand I’ve never heard of, but it looks solid and well-made.
But then Conrad starts shouting “Cavallo! Cavallo!” and pointing at the Ferrari model, and Bertha won’t have anything less for her little duke.
A Ferrari car seat? For 129 euros? Well, that’s the power of marketing. That’s the kindersitz I end up buying.
Next episode: Quiet Time
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