Santi's power of observation

It happened yesterday. We were at Carlos Siri's house, celebrating Thanksgiving with him and the Zieglers. It was a very Argentine Thanksgiving celebration, as we had a barbecue (with burgers, sausages and hotdogs) with salads and dessert instead of the traditionally North American turkey.

The after lunch lasted hours, of course. About five, to be more precise. We talked and drank mate together, while the kids were playing who knows where. The only 'kid' who would stay with us most of the time was Santi, because well, he's 12 now. :-)

We talked about soccer, rugby, the upcoming elections, our respective blogs, other people's blogs :-), people we know, people we regret we know, Santi's future in soccer, and a long list of etceteras.

Right before we got ready to leave, the conversation derived to the excellent books that Roberto Fontanarrosa (who died recently) has written. And I said that my favourites were those in which he talked about the group of friends meeting at "El Cairo" for coffee, where they would talk about pretty much anything, going from soccer to philosophy and then to sex within one minute. I then said that nothing seemed a better example of the Argentine idiosyncrasy than that. And then Santi said: "But Dad, you guys have been doing that all day! A few minutes ago you started talking about my soccer team and ended discussing Catherine Fife's platform!"

Santi was right, of course. Yesterday's was a perfect Argentine gathering. In more than one sense.

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