Those black square stuff

Hello everyone, and a Merry Christmas for you all!!!

Today I wan't to write about something my dear, dear nephew said. He is seven years old , and he is super cute and quite smart. Of course, you might say that I'm just too proud of him because I love him, but his teachers have always stated the same, and they are not especially attached to him, as you might acknowledge.

But first I must make some explanation about how does Christmas works in Chile, since it is that time of the year.

In here we make advent calendars, bake cookies, sing carols and all that stuff, but here we don't have many pine trees, so we buy plastic ones and save them for the following christmases. We cook a Christmas meal, generally turkey, but not necesarily. In fact, a lot of people in Chile are poor, so there aren't many of us that can afford a turkey dinner... but we always manage to have a nice and special meal.
Christmas in Chile is, as in many countries, a holiday to be spent with one's family, so a lot of small family nucleus gather around one of their relatives and spend the festivities toghether in order to feel like they belong to a large family... That is exactly my case. In my family we used to be four: my mum, my dad, my sister and I. But my sister has been married for several years now, and my mum and Dad don't even live in the same city, so it would be a rather lonely Christmas if we didn't get all toghether. That's why we tend to gather around my sister's family as also do her inlaws and their younger kids, so we ussually end up spendig Christmas all together and having a blast every year.

But the most important thing you must know about chilean Christmases is the following: Chile was originally a very Catholic country, for which reason we tend to give extra importnace on congratutating baby Jesus very early on his birthday every year . So at twelve o'clock, people stand up from the table, put on the baby Jesus figure in the crib, and then, as a symbol of our devotion, we open our gifts (which Santa has swiftly delivered while the kids were distracted) as if they were Jesus' gifts from us to him. Next morning, when other kids and families throughout the world are jut oppening their presents, we spend the day in family, trying out our prevoiusly oppened gifts and loving Jesus and stuff.

Of course the sheer protagonists of Christmas end up being the children, in my case, my niece and nephew, who receive a lot of presents, both from Santa and from every member of the family year after year. This year my nephew got amog a lot of other stuff, a mekano set that he particularly loved, as we could see later next day when we arrived at mi sister's and found that he had been busy building propellers and boomer speakers with his new mekano and some old radio parts, and he showed us very proudly his new inventions, untill a propeller nearly cut his grandpas finger in two, and he stopped building propellers to try and make his boomer speaker work. The only thing was that he couldn't connect it to a music device to try it, and then he said it, the thing that made me write all this tedious rant in the first place...

He asked his mum for "one of those black square stuff" leaving all of us dumbstrucked, for neither of us had any idea of what he was talking about. "What black square stuff?" somebody asked, and then it hit me.
"Do you want it to listen to music?" I asked.
"Yes", he answered and then and there I told everyone at the dining table
"He wants a cassette, and he doesn't even know what they're called!"

I've never felt older in my hole life!, the boy didn't know how to call a cassette, and not only that! he didn't understand that it didn't work as an mp3 player or an ipod, not as a recording!

Technology has really moved forward since I was a little kid and listen to cassettes all the time, but nothing could have prepared me for something like this, so I just needed to write about it.
Has anything of the sort ever happened to you, my oh so invisible, and even quieter friends? If so, I would like to hear about it, even if it has to be in my dreams...

So long! and a Happy new year to all of you!!

The defense

Hi there! I'm just way behind in what concerns my blogger activity... so sorry, but I have wonderfull news!!! I just won a writing contest!! in english!!! I'm super proud of myself and I'd like to share my little tale with you guys, my always faithfull, incredibly handsome, and very silent ghost host of followers :)

So here it is, the non-revised piece, with more than one ortographic mistake, but not serious enough to leave me without my super little first place :D... The Defense!!!!

At the city library’s front, in Viña del mar, there is one of the only three bronze casts in the world of a custom made Rodin’s sculpture. I know that because I am that sculpture. My name is “The Defense”, and I was suposed to stand gloriously at some square in Valparaíso, to be admired by every high Commander on the city, but apparently my naked, anguished-looking characters didn’t suit the idea of a national heroe’s effigy. Therefore, I was left to get mouldy at a basement until, alter several years of darkness and misery, I was freed again, exposed to the public eye. At first they set me at an unsuitable place, so I coud not be anything but unhappy about my situation. But after ten years or so, the fools in charge of my wellbeing finally found a place worthy of my recently recovered celebrity status. I was to be posted in front of a palace. It was not the greatest palace in the city, but a concurred one at least, since it was the city library.

I was ecstatic when I heard the news, I just couldn’t wait to get there, where I would surely be appreciated by every passerby. I, “The Defense”, would finally be the object of public admiration that I deserved to be.

Of course, now that I look back I’m shocked at the idea of being so naïve. The place wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I expected it to be. For starters, the crowd of learned scholars that I expected to find at the entrance of a public library where at a distinct lack. The only people who entered the building on a regular basis where the employees, simple people, tired by their jobs, not willing to take in the surroundings.

Then, there where the pedestrians. None of them, and I’m being literal, has ever bothered to take a proper look at me, least of all utter a word of praise. Soon I discovered that the only people who ever even spare me a glance or a quick photo were tourists, and they all fled rapidly when they were introduced to the moai standing a few yards from me (which, by the way, has quite a large amount of visitors, and that it’s located on the opposite side of the block, so it steals all the attention, the selfish bastard), at the museum of natural arts.

In the end I settled for standing here, all alone in the middle of the crowd, and visited only by pigeons, whose only gift for was their shit in my head.

This was my pathetic life until a couple of months ago, when a rather odd looking old man came and seated at the bench in front of me, praising my fine lines, and the store narrated by them, with his eyes. The old tramp returned the next day, and the day after that, and so on, and so on. After what must have been a week, he started talking to me, and even though he looked like a poor old nutter, his words transpired such intensity and wizenes that I started to think that my luck had changed for good, and that I had finally found a deep, learned soul to whom I could share all my great value.

But I’ve always wanted more, I wanted to be watched and understood by a lot of people, by dozens and hudreds of people. I wanted the grandeur my noble father had inherited to me. And so I started to stop paying attention to the vagrant, to stop waiting for him, and I finally managed to stop noticing him at all.

That was untill today at noon, when he came back, looking furious, yelling and making havoc around me. He was angry, he was more than angry, he was mad. But I soon stopped noticing him, because at precisely that time, a multitude of people started congregating around me, taking me in with wide eyes, astonished, in awe. It was what I had always dreamt of, and I suddenly felt happy, fulfilled, in peace, one with God!… And then I heard the gunshot, and I felt the blood splattered all over my body. People began to scream. “He really did it!” they said.

My tramp’s last words, as I heard a witness telling the policemen, were “God damn that Rodin statue!”

hope you have liked it!!!

bye bye!!