Ordinary Hero

Today, I can still see my mother waiting for me in front of the primary school's big golden wrought-iron gate. She used to walk my sister in her baby carriage around the square opposite the school. She used to arrive a few minutes before the bell rang. Around noon, we used to leave school and go back home for lunch. My father was rarely at home at this time. He was a policeman and was on duty almost every day at the time we were having dinner. I can also see the olive skinned, six-year-old boy who enrolled in our class three months after the first day back at school. Our female teacher showed him to the free seat beside me. She asked me to help the new pupil adapt himself to his classmates. Kids are rarely shy, and at noon, I knew almost everything about him. He came from a remote exotic island, located in the Indian Ocean, called Mauritius. At the age of five, I just had little knowledge of geography. However, everybody knows that this island is a heavenly spot covered in huge rain forests. Mysterious shrines and temples are hidden inland. It is infested with wild animals like fierce tigers, voracious crocodiles and venomous giant spiders. His father was one of the most famous hunters in the world. He shot a great deal of big game and his mansion's walls were littered with hunting trophies. He married the island king's daughter. In these countries, fathers give their daughters dowries when they marry. In such a wealthy island, the princess must have been given her weight's worth in precious stones and jewels. Without a doubt, his father was a hero! A hero's son obviously was a hero too. To keep such a good friend, I had to enhance my own life. The main difficulty was to explain the presence of my mother and my sister who waited for me every day at noon and at the end of the school day. My sister was like me and she could remain my sister, but who could this woman be, who warmly embraced me when I got out from school? Nobody hugged a kid but a mother and ….. A GOVERNESS! Of course! My mother wasn't my mother! My mother was our governess! However, who could afford to hire a governess? Only a wealthy family could..... My father was the bodyguard of……. France's Prime Minister!....... NO, no, no….. Instead he was the personal bodyguard of…… THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC!.....YES!..... Now, all was clear in my mind! All of a sudden I understood why he never had lunch with us! He obviously had to follow the president wherever he travelled across the world! The president of the French republic is such an important person that a lot of spies and terrorists would like to kill him! My father's job is extremely dangerous! It is the reason why he earns a lot of money. With all the money he has earned, he bought a large mansion. It is such a big house that I don't exactly know how many rooms it has. To keep up the house, we have a lot of domestics. My mother is very busy giving them orders and supervising their work. She cannot waste her time picking me up at school, but fortunately, the governess is very serious and reliable. Eventually, my father was a hero, and as a consequence, I was a hero too!

My new friend and I often wondered if the other pupils were aware that they attended the same class as heroes' sons. Our teacher wasn't aware either that two of her pupils were heroes' sons. By mutual consent, we decided that nobody should know anything about our private lives. It was easy to imagine how terrible the consequences could be if someone knew even a little about our parents' social status. Gangsters could try to abduct us and hold us for ransom!

Thus, day by day, we enjoyed telling each other extraordinary stories about our fathers, each more extravagant than the next. Unfortunately, three months later, my friend left our school as suddenly as he arrived. I've never had anymore news from him, although we had sworn an oath to never part. This grim day, I lost my large house. My mother again started picking me up at school, and my father became again a policeman. I was my old self again. However, I understood many years later that my father wasn't just an ordinary person. Actually, my father was just an ordinary hero, and he was my hero.