martes, 25 de septiembre de 2012

My 100th entry - OR - The coolness and the aftershave


I started to write my blog almost three years ago. When I started, I thought writing was only a way to deal with the sorrow and loneliness of my stay in Nicaragua. I never thought I could be ever writing my blog entry number 100...yes, this is entry number 100!

Here are some statistics:

The least read entries was “The dance floor” (6 times) and I visited the page at least 4 times...

Right now, I can think of some highlight among the happy entries

And an emotional one about friendship: a smiley in the title :-) OR Männer im Wasser  

Thank you for reading my sad, my funny, my nostalgic, my familiar, my prosecco, my friendship, my culinary entries...and the other ones.  Here is my entry number 100: 


The coolness and the aftershave 

My high school prom night was in early summer 1996. I drank Gin & Tonic that night. During that period, most of my friends drank whiskey on the rocks. Now, 17 years later, I sincerely don't understand why we did this.

I don't know at what point children (because we were children, we were 17) like to imitate their fathers. I think, we thought it was cool to do things older people did, maybe we felt we were cool because we were ahead of our time...

Years later, when I was around 20, I suddenly felt that people over 30 were uncool. I did anything to avoid looking like them. I stopped drinking Gin and I grew my hair long (very uncool now and also very uncool back then, but I thought it was cool). I thought drinking canned beer and cheap red wine and having long hair was very cool. This was for me an anti-30-year-old-attitude.

I am about to turn 34 and it was two years ago that my German flatmate told me she couldn’t understand why I still had no wife and no kids.

And now, after 17 years, I am slowly doing things that older people do:
  • I love Gin & Tonic...again,
  • I have a moustache (which makes me look disgusting and cool at the same time),
  • and the coolest thing of all: I used Old Spice after shaving last week.
Do you know Old Spice? I know it from the time we were living with our father - that was before 1986 – and since then, I haven't lived in a household with a bottle of Old Spice.

Last weekend, I was visiting my cousin Larisa and I shaved while I was there. When I asked for some aftershave to cool down the irritated skin, she handed me more than an aftershave, it was a bottle full of memories. Since I was 4 or five years old, Old Spice stands for recently shaved men over 50. It was great using it...it smelled great (not “great” in the pure sense of great, but “great” in the pure sense of “cool-retro” great). 

I do not know if using Old Spice last week felt wonderful because for me, it is cool to do stuff older people do, or because maybe once, when I was younger, I had the desire of imitating my father...