The little boy and the big Renault

In the late fifties, a French college professor who had bought a rustic chalet in my mountain hamlet used to come from the big city to spend three month into the fresh, Alpine air. 

He and his wife had five daughters, and the seven of them would pile up inside a Renault Frégate, the largest French-made sedan at the time.

During their stay, they didn’t use the car much, except to run some errands and would park it, most of the time, in an inconspicuous location away from views. 

There was a little boy who might have been 6 or 7, that was attracted by the large automobile. In particular, it was its bulging chrome hubcaps that exerted a magnetic attraction for him. 

Once he kicked one of them with his rugged mountain shoes and observed that it made a pretty big dent into the hemispheric shape of the wheel cover. His victory over seemingly hard-metal encouraged him to continue and to add dents to the first wheel and soon to the three other remaining ones. 

He never got caught by the professor and I don’t know how the man reacted when he realized the extent of the vandalism. To this very day, I never could understand what happened in that little boy’s head to make him act in that manner. 

Did he discover his unknown power in stamping metal or was it merely a matter of making his mark on things? Did he see breasts in the anatomically shaped hubcap? 

I don’t think we’ll never ever know...