Reader's Note:  "The Hunchback and the Boy" is a bookmark from 2001.  Please see "Posted Notes" for the complete directory.   

She wanted to see Paris, so I took her to Paris.  

We had a fabulous time.  We had eight days to see and do as much as we could, and we took full advantage of it.   Now, we were never big on the guided tours and stuff.   That was for tourists.  We... were adventurers.   We explored the subway systems, the Eiffel Tower, the historic Paris Nord Train Station (during a day trip to Belgium,) and we traveled up and down the Seine River as much as we could.  We ventured into just about every shop and cafe along the Champs-Elysees until we had chosen all of our favorites.  Well... her favorites actually, but it was no less amazing for it.   

On this particular afternoon, as we turned left around a corner with the Seine River blocking our path, she pointed out the Notre Dame Cathedral brilliantly looming directly in front of us.  

Admittedly, I was quite surprised. “You mean the cathedral with the bell tower... from the Disney movie... with the Hunchback... name of Quasimodo... from the Victor Hugo story…   you mean that Cathedral of Notre Dame?”  

She looked at me as if to say, “Oh you poor uneducated man.”  And in truth I did feel rather foolish because I had not known that it was in Paris.  For some reason I thought it was in London.  (The actual truth is I had never really thought about it at all.) But now here it was… and not at all grimy and nasty looking like I remembered in the movie.  (Not the Disney version… I mean the live action version. You would have to be a good bit older to remember.) 

The cathedral before us (pictured) had been the subject of a long restoration process that began in 1991 and continued on for more than a decade.  We learned that Notre Dame is the most popular monument in Paris, and that included the Eiffel Tower.  So I will admit it was an experience.

Overall, however, we spent most of our time exploring The Louvre. We actually spent about 3 of our 8 days wandering through this amazing art museum.  Everyone has a different theory on how to see the Louvre.  Ours was simply to allow enough time and take lots of pictures.   I could, of course rattle off a long laundry list of the spectacles that we saw, but you can do that on the Internet yourselves.  

Instead, I will tell you a very short story of our last and final day at the Louvre.  I asked my traveling companion what she had liked best of all of the things that the Louvre had to offer.  To my surprise, she chose the boy. 

We had stopped briefly to rest my feet while inside one of the countless galleries.  While we were sitting on one of the benches, we noticed a young Asian boy, sitting in the middle of the corridor, sketching.  People were bustling all about, not really looking at him, as they took in the ornately framed masterpieces. 

I have no idea how young this boy was, but he seemed very young indeed.  He also seemed to be alone.  Yet his poise and degree of concentration as he simply sat and sketched his drawing, impressed me as that of someone far more mature.  As we watched him, we discussed his future, creating careers and life experiences for him, based upon what little we knew. 

With his sketchbook in hand, we saw him as an artist… perhaps a graphic artist, or an animator, or a cartoonist.   With his degree of concentration, we cast him in the role of historian, whose sketches would serve as memory jogs to augment his notes about the historic scenes around us.  His calmness amidst so much movement… surely he would be a scholar of some notable accomplishment.  As one or two people spoke warmly to him, we watched him respond pleasantly.  Surely such a boy might become a linguist or an international representative arranging the dialogue of nations. 

We must have played that game for almost an hour.  Finally, we left before he did.   (I will always regret that I never went over to actually see what was on his piece of paper.)  We never saw his caregiver or parent.  We knew only that my feet were once again fit to carry us forward.

I am quite sure that my daughter remembers this boy from her trip to Paris with her father.  The trip was my gift to her on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.  She was the one who made sure that I took the picture.