Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer¶
377 words on Books , German Media
After 
I lent Patrick Süskind's Das Parfum (Perfume in English) -an excellent book by the way - to my mother she also bought Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer (The Story of Mr Sommer), with pretty illustrations by Jean-Jacques Sempé edition and gave it to me after reading it herself.
It's written from a child's perspective telling us, unsurprisingly, something about Mr Sommer, but getting sidetracked frequently along the way, so we learn quite a bit about the narrator's life. It has a very interesting and open-minded end that makes you think about things as guilt and empathy, but what I loved the book most for are all the details in it when the narrator gets sidetracked.
He tells us about his piano lessons and how playing four-handed Diabelli sonatinas is just about one of the nicest and most relaxing things you can do - particularly when all other pieces seem very hard and evil. Pretty much, what I thought when playing Diabelli and possibly a hint that most piano teachers have very similar goodies up their sleeves.
But the very best and on-the-spot description in the book was the narrator telling us how he remembered where right and left are: By learning that right is the side of the bike where the handbrake is [at least that helps for bikes with backpedalling brakes]:
Anschließend wies mich mein Bruder in die wichtigsten Regeln der Straßenverkehrsordnung ein, zuvörderst in die Regel, immer strikt rechts zu fahren, wobei rechts als diejenige Seite definiert war, wo sich die Handbremse an der Lenkstange befand [Noch heute halte ich mich an dieses einprägsame Definition, wenn ich in einem Zustand momentaner Verwirrung nicht mehr weiß, wo rechts oder links ist. Ich stelle mir dann einfach eine Fahrradlenkstange vor, betätige im Geist die Handbremse und bin wieder bestens orientiert.] ...
Wow, that's just so me, I thought, when reading it. The way I remember this little but important fact is by recalling that you wear a watch on your left wrist - and that's despite the fact that I haven't been wearing a watch for about a decade.
I think I'll dig a bit into this, and do some research on how people remember the difference between left and right. Tell me!
