I am so frightened, shocked, and worried about the bloodbath issue that Joe Biden the zombie says Donald Trump has promised that I am going to talk about childhood acquaintances. But not childhood acquaintances on whom you look back fondly, whom you meet many years later and your heart warms. No, today I will talk about the other ones. Those childhood friends with whom you had to spend time, but in the same way that a prisoner has to share a cell, with no more in common with the other prisoner than the occasional misdemeanor.
As a columnist, I have an innate and special ability to dodge uncomfortable conversations. For example: I hate to talk about what I write. I know there are columnists who love to be stopped on the street and receive a running commentary of that day’s column, or yesterday’s, whether to be praised or even criticized. This is not my case. It makes me uncomfortable to talk about what I write, for two reasons: First, because I have used thousands of characters to write it, so it is difficult to find something interesting to add; and second, because more than half of my articles talk about politics, which is already quite boring, but I swear I have no intention of changing the world with them. I don’t want to convince anyone, I don’t intend to make a lasting impact on anyone’s ideas, and, in any case, I have no interest whatsoever in participating in open debate at the bar about the same thing I spend my work hours on.
Maybe it’s time to remember that you go to pubs to forget about work, and sometimes the occasional woman. So talking about work or girlfriends under the neon lights of a pub is impolite, whichever way you look at it.
However, there is something that still terrifies me more than receiving extensive comments on what I write (I clarify that I am referring to the comments out loud in my leisure hours at the bar or the beach, the written comments I do read and enjoy), and that is meeting some old friend that you would rather not meet.
Childhood friends with whom you have deliberately lost contact always follow the same pattern: If before they were a bit of a jerk, now as adults they are complete idiots (look at me); if they were so narrow-minded that there wasn’t room for a smoking paper to fit in sideways, now their brain has become more like an anvil, both solid and beaten; and if as children they enjoyed meddling in the lives of others, now they act like a sensationalist domestic affairs magazine. And, finally, another innate characteristic completes the pattern: They still think you are 8 years old, that you do the same things you did when you were 8 years old, and they probably believe that, while they work, get married and have children, you still go to school wearing shorts every morning to learn your damn multiplication tables.
If you run into them and have no escape (I tried to leave through the emergency exit of a pub last week, and I do not recommend it — bar owners get very angry when an idiot sets off the fire alarm and does not have a good reason prepared to justify his hooliganism), you will have no choice but to fake a broad smile. Often, the less of a relationship you have with them, the tighter the hug, and the harder the punches of camaraderie to the shoulder or even the cheeks. After all, you have to carry on a conversation, maybe a few minutes that seem like hours. Then you have to feign interest in their life, while you respond to their questions with identical passion, hiding the boredom in your eyes, despite the several spurts of apathy coming out of my ears like the last time this happened. (READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: The Washington Post Has Attacked Tanning ‘Addiction.’ That Won’t Do.)
My theory is that former childhood friends are worse than current enemies. You don’t have to smile at them, you don’t have to give them information about your private family life, and you don’t have to deny that you still like playing with Mattel’s Masters of the Universe figures.
Moreover, a former childhood friend would do exactly what Biden and his media loudspeakers have done with Donald Trump: listen to a story (the one about the bloodbath), and twist it in a maddening way, mixing the urge to annoy you with their usual load of prejudice about you.
Personally, I would put old childhood friends in a box and cast them out to sea. But my spiritual director, even though he agrees with me, says that this might be in conflict with one of the Commandments. Although it can’t be too serious because he can’t remember which one forbids it either.
Translated by Joel Dalmau.
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