The man in the bathtub by Quinny Martínez

Picture taken from Pinterest

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Dedicated to: Alirio Gonzáles Pérez – Director of Children’s Audiovisuals School, Belén De Los Andaquíes, Caquetá, Colombia.

That day his life changed; it was four in the afternoon, and suddenly he was surrounded by the sound of bullets and bombs, the product of an incomprehensible war that devastated everything. Nerves seized his mind and his trembling body that at that moment gave him very little. He leaned out the door as best he could, but only the voices of the people in the despair of the thunderous steps of death were heard; because when death lurks the heart knows it. The rampant war through towns and cities, taking whoever it touched ahead, making landscapes rivers of tears and blood.

He ran for his life, threw himself on the cold floor as the bullets approached and went into the bathroom, like in the movies seen on TV, pouncing on the old bathtub. As he could, he turned it around and with tears of fear he waited. Hours passed and at six in the morning the rooster crowed, he got scared, for moments he thought that what had brought him to the position he was in, was only an absurd dream. Exhaustion had overcome everything, he fell asleep … Cautiously, with the fright still in his body and soul, he sat up, looking for the light of day amid the rubble that had become his house, his town, his life, his breathing. That beautiful greenish nativity scene, full of life, was a cemetery of buried dreams in which it seemed that nothing would bloom again.

But war strengthens hope and makes those who don’t get kill resilient, and he understood that. The days passed and those who did not survive were already buried. Others had left leaving everything, walking on the road to the uncertainty and despair. Meanwhile, the man of the bathtub scooped up what was left of the life he knew from stone to stone, and built a less luxurious, but braver, refuge. A refuge for life, so that children and young people learn to scare fear away.

That day the story began of whom today, in the midst of the crisis of an invisible and even “benevolent” enemy, shares the stories and makes radio with the children of those frightened children, and with the grandchildren of those who returned to their plots after being scared out.

The man in the bathtub gives us courage, gives us hope because he understands missing things, he understands death, he understands need, he understands life from what is truly important.

The man in the bathtub is none other than the oldest shepherd in all that flock, a big boy who carries his part of that flourished nativity scene, a nativity scene that has left behind fear and war. The man in the bathtub does his thing by inheriting a legacy that entertains, makes radio, television, music, motivates us and tells us about truly important things. He tells us stories of hope full of smiles that today travel the world. The man in the bathtub is my friend, and he also rescued me from the rubble of a war.

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Visit the author’s blog at: https://erotismoenguardiablog.wordpress.com/