I Become A Man

On Groundhog's Day, February the Second, everyone in America rouses their neighborhood groundhog and, if he sees his shadow, I have six more weeks of birthday. Trust me; there was an O.C. episode about it. You know, the one where Taylor stalks Ryan in a groundhog suit. And I have my birthday.

For Groundhog's Day is my birthday. I hope you celebrated it. My mom did. She tells me that she had cake and everything, all the way down to a mock up of my form with my picture pasted to it. Now that is a mother's love.

But I was not there; I did not see it. I was in Interlaken, Switzerland, celebrating my birthday. I turned twenty on February the Second, you know it? Ancient traditions say that this, coupled with some strange baby blood rituals, makes you a man. I did the baby blood thing long ago, so the only thing left to do was turn twenty.

I had my birthday dinner in a not-intended-for-tourists Swiss pub. I ordered sausage and hashbrowns, but I did not get my food for a long time, on account of the waitress had sat down with a table of elderly patrons.

These old men and women had been drinking since four in the afternoon, right after the mountain closed; I did the math while watching them. I multiplied the number of Swiss-German folk songs they unconsciously repeatedly sang by some number, and concluded that they were flat out hammered.

We ate for three hours, and never once did they stop singing, though they doubled back on their repertoire several times. These Swiss were not just old. They were old old, World War II old, use a walker and drink harder old. They did sing Happy Birthday to me in Swiss-German, though.

When I left, I had to walk about ten minutes alone to my hostel. Going across a park, I could see one mountain rising above the town, and I couldn't help but thinking it a monster. You know that scene in the movie that goes for like three minutes, and suddenly a gigantic eye opens in the background, and you say, "Mother of Pearl, that monster has been in the background the entire scene!" I kept imagining that the mountain would suddenly open an eye, reveal itself a dragon, and lay waste to the town.

Kind of like God, that dragon. The mountain. Whatever. So I made a deal with the dragon-god, and told Him if He made me a man, I would commit my first fruits to Him.

Nothing's happened yet.