Beamer, Benz or Bentley; Bentley and Beerbongs, our popculture is full of alliterations. Today I would like to tell you about Boys, Beers, Buggies and Babies.
As a little introduction: I grew up in a tiny village close to a small town close to a bigger town close to Hamburg. In my age there had been only a few others, and most of the few were not my type of people (or maybe I wasn’t there type, whatever, chicken or egg, right? 😉 ). So I didn’t have many friends, what I did have though was two older siblings. Both of them with many friends in their age. I highly doubt that my siblings enjoyed it as much as I did, but often enough, my parents forced them to take me with them. I loved it, it was the coolest thing ever to hang with the older kids. The issue about it is, my brother is 8 years older than I am, my sister is 4 years older. Imagine my brother being around 16, him meeting up with his friends to play football… who also showed up? 8 year old Lucas, wanting to play with them… my poor siblings. Most of my siblings friends are still in the same tiny village and by now most of them are like brothers and sisters to me. They saw me growing up from an annoying little kid, to an annoying teenager and nowadays to an annoying adult (physically speaking obviously, mentally I am maximum 12).
Now to the actual story: Both of my siblings have children, as do most of their friends by now. In the last couple of years there was an obvious change in conversational topics, from alcohol, sex and parties, to diapers, births and the best products against soreness. You can barely hear a conversation in which they don’t talk about someone who is about to give birth, giving birth right at this moment, or who recently gave birth. Whether it is a man or woman, it doesn’t matter… the topics are literally the same. One key difference I witnessed though, is the way how they go for a stroll. While the ladies couple up and walk with one or two fellow Mama’s, the corresponding Papa’s created a WhatsApp group (including none Daddies) which is called Daddy Cool in reference to Boney M’s classic and they walk in gangs. The attentive observer can easily catch a group of 5-8 men, all but one pushing a buggy, the most important one though is the “designated survivor”, he is the one carrying the backpack full of beers. So imagine this scene, a group of (by now 30+ year old) boys pushing their babies in their buggies all of them drinking beers, laughing and making jokes like they are still 16. Maybe I’m not the only one who never grew up, maybe none of us has.
It looks odd to be honest, these 4 B’s somehow don’t match, whether it is these boys with babies in their buggies, or its these boys drinking beers while pushing their babies, or babies in buggies drinking beers. For me, one B is definitely too much 😉