Jemima says the expat community here is full of people with Peter Pan complex. Maybe I exaggerate and she was just referring a few individuals... but whatever the case, Monday morning 4am when I found myself in a children's playground doing mazes, slippery slides and 'who can swing the highest' competitions with two highly-respected foreign correspondents and a Mexican artist, I was inclined to agree (just for record, I'm pointing finger at me. And maybe SMJ).
Well, more the next day when I woke up to find the back of my legs bright purple, bruising sustained during aforesaid competitive swinging... but unnoticed due to the anaesthetic properties of tequila.
(I won, just for the record)
But then, when I realised why my ear was really quite sore, I revised my concurrence. It brought recollections of the cement animal sculptures (is the best word I can find, but kids' style) with holes in the middle, and my claim that I could be the one to fit through the middle, despite glaring disparity between the size of my body and the size of the hole.
I got my head through no worries. The shoulders, not so much so. And then discovered that it's a lot easier to get head through, than back out again. As I half stood there, bent over with my head on one side of the sculpture and body on the other, hearing voices somewhere above me talking about calling the fire brigade in the morning (how do you break a solid cement animal without breaking the not-so-solid flesh-and-blood animal stuck in it?????) I decided there was only one thing to do. I crushed my ear into a shape it was never meant to be, and pulled.
Forget Peter Pan. The entire incident puts me more in the idiot category.
But, God it was fun.
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