An engagement party, please

Chapter 13

Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

My opponent giggles. "This is ridiculous. Why would one do a thing like that?"

"So you haven't done that ever?" He shakes his head.

"I usually don't either. There was one exception though.", I answer.

"One exception in your entire life? Pardon, but that is bizarre. I feel like you either always rehearse or never." "Well, it was when I was thirteen. Rules were different back then. Additionally, the cause was a boy. So that only counts half."

"A boy has been the reason? You mean you had a crush, like in falling in love and having butterflies in your stomach?" "Very funny, we all love your sarcasm. I should add that there is a major difference between crush and love. I thought you would know that. However, I shall begin with telling my story, to clear things up a bit.

My thirteen year old self was truly clever. This guy I am talking about was two years older than me and back then two years were a big deal. I was fully aware of that it was nearly impossible to ever get to talk to him. So I thought why not writing a letter, if speaking to him was not an opportunity?"

"This is getting exciting." "And it will get even better. Somehow, I knew where he lived. Before you judge me, he lived like one block away and I had his address due to his brother or something like that. I end up writing that letter and throwing it into his post-box – not realising he had a younger brother, who probably wouldn't care about privacy of letters. When I headed back home, I decided to call my classmate and begging him to leave the letter alone. You really don't have to understand the logic behind that, considering this call was meant to make things more embarrassing."

"I guess you slightly had the feeling it would get awkward and tried to write the perfect script for your call to make things less weird?"

"Indeed, however, the worst thing was, that I had thrown the letter in their neighbours' box so I basically called for nothing."

"Oh my, oh my. What happened next?" "Nothing, simply nothing." "That sounds desperate." "Whatever."

What would constitute a perfect day for you?

"Be prepared for a basic answer." "I didn't expect anything else." He responds with a mischievous smile. "Well, that won't keep me up from illustrating it to you. My perfect day would start in a foreign country next to a beautiful beach – probably somewhere in Australia I guess. I would wake up and look absolutely flawless and enjoy the view, eat some yummy breakfast and pass some time at the beach. Not to forget, I would make new friends on my perfect day. In the evening I would go out to a fancy place and eat dinner with friends or with a handsome date. At night, oh yeah at night, the party would get started."

"Wow."

"I know, right?"

"You need hella lot to be happy."

Oh here it comes, his inner-minimalism shows off. Actually, this confuses me. I thought we had similar imaginations in terms of this question. I never thought of him as someone who is fond of a life like Diogenes lived it.

"That is not true. It may need a lot to consider a day as perfect; still I can be content even if my day is not all glitters and gold."

"I don't know if you mean what you say." "I do. Please, don't let us drive in to the dangerous world of philosophy tonight." "But we are already! Or how would you call that experiment instead?"

"You didn't answer the question. What is your definition of a perfect day?" "Surprisingly, I do not know the answer to that. There are probably plenty of ways to have a perfect day."

"But there must be criteria?" "Probably that I have a content attitude from the beginning." "Do you have one now?" "Sure." "Would you consider this evening as perfect then?"

He simply smiles amusedly. Asshole.