The cruel hangover from the 30th birthday dinner and a question that haunts us
We've exported reasonable Yankee traditions—it's preferable to dress up children for Halloween than take them to the cemetery for All Saints' Day, and to give them presents at the beginning of the holidays for Santa Claus rather than at the end for Three Kings' Day—but in general, we haven't been given much junk. That celebration of collective stupidity that is Black Friday, eating turkey, the obsession with constantly growing taller, and, above all, going out dressed as if you were always going to play sports or go to the beach. But there is one fascinating one: high school anniversary dinners.
Last week I went to the 30th anniversary celebration. These events, designed to show off, are the stuff of charter and private schools, so you spend the first few trays of beer calculating how much money has been spent on Botox and hair transplants . The fact that it's impossible to tell when someone's laughing at your joke and when they simply can't change their expression makes the first few minutes of testing the waters difficult, but you quickly get to the real goal of the party: showing off.
If you work for a newspaper and appear on TV, I have a company that makes millions and I know the Pope (I don't know which one, but I know someone). If you have two children, I have three gifted children. If you bought an apartment, I have a chalet in the mountains, a house on the beach, and four tourist apartments. Since there's no way of knowing who's lying, the sky's the limit for exaggeration, although you just have to be patient: when the open bar ends and you have to start paying for rounds, you discover many millionaires who, in reality, are mid-level consultants and live in Las Tablas .
Up to this point, everything is entertaining and inconsequential, but then the alcohol does its work and the masks fall away. Suddenly, that adult party reverts to a gathering of a group of 17-year-olds at Keeper, at Empire, at El Rey de Copas, at any of those filthy clubs where we became human. And the wounds remain, they all remain. Questions arise that have survived 30 years, lurking in the subconscious . Why did you leave me? Why didn't you pass me that ball in the tournament final? How come we never hooked up? Are you who you thought you were going to be?
In reality, we don't want to know: we want to be, we want to feel, we want to deceive ourselves for a moment, we want to return fleetingly to a life of writing in which every morning you woke up not knowing how the day would end... Well, some divorcees also wanted to get laid, I'm not going to lie to you. The karaoke lights come on, and one by one the teenagers come out the door to magically become forty-somethings. They take a taxi and go home thinking: "Am I that? Am I who I wanted to be?" The hangover will be harsh.
elmundo
