Adults

Usage examples of grownups.

Just as with the cuckoo that stops calling too soon, just as with upset saltcellars, spiders seen in the morning, black cats on the left, the oil portrait of Uncle that falls off the wall because the nail has come loose in the plaster, just as in a mirror, grownups see more in and behind a clock than any clock can justify.

The drum stood up well under the strain, the grownups around me not quite so well, they were always wanting to interrupt my drum, to cross it up, to crimp my drumsticks -- but nature looked out for me.

Soon, not only the grownups but the children were dancing to the happy, toe tapping music.

From the very beginning it was plain to me: grownups will not understand you.

And so with a single fall, not exactly without gravity but its degree of gravity calculated by myself in advance, I not only supplied a reason -- repeatedly confirmed by the doctors and in general satisfactory to the grownups who simply have to have their explanations for things -- for my failure to grow, but in addition and without any real intention on my part, transformed our harmless, good-natured Matzerath into a guilty Matzerath.

However, there is something very strange and childish in the way grownups feel about their clocks -- in that respect, I was never a child.

I am willing to agree that the clock is probably the most remarkable thing that grownups ever produced.

grownups have it in them to be creative, and sometimes, with the help of ambition, hard work, and a bit of luck they actually are, but being grownups, they have no sooner created some epoch-making invention than they become a slave to it.

But not all the grownups around me proved as understanding as Jan Bronski.

If grownups wished to regard me as a bed-wetter, that I could accept with an inner shrug of the shoulders, but that I should have to behave like a simpleton year in year out was a source of chagrin to Oskar and to his teacher as well.

Axel Mischke and Harry Schlager had built a kind of tent out of blankets and old rags to prevent grownups from looking into their soup.

Tom Thumb at all, you only heard his voice and saw the grownups chasing around after him.

At the streetcar stop and in the car I went right on drumming to prevent the three grownups from talking.

While the three grownups were thus distributing themselves about the apartment, I was still in the living room.

I looked after them sadly and with an empty heart, waved at them as they entered a taxi and completely vanished inside it -- for the Ford was made for grownups, it looked empty as though cruising for customers as it drove off with my friends.