Recently I was on the road to my hometown. Shortly before, upon arriving at another one, Chacabuco, I had a memory. In Argentina we call “playing the rat” when sneaking out of school, a flirtation with clandestinity. In a small town it was difficult. We all knew each other. Playing the rat meant taking off our uniforms and putting us in a place where they couldn't discover us that was more fun than school (it wasn't easy: school, public, was an interesting place). I did it a few times and on one occasion, with other colleagues, we decided to play the rat and go to Chacabuco, a city 54 kilometers from ours. We had shared a trip with boys from a school there and some of us had established close relationships with men we wanted to see. After complex logistics—calling them on the phone (in years without cell phones), asking them if they wanted to skip school, finding out bus schedules—the day was decided. There were risks: an accident on the road, being discovered. It didn't occur to us that anything bad could happen to a 16-year-old person in those circumstances, except for an accident or a denunciation. We went, we saw them, we came back. A couple of days later, on the way to school, my father asked me: “Were you in Chacabuco?” I don't”. Him: “They saw you.” I was not there”. End of the talk. That noon my mother did not speak to me during lunch. She didn't speak to my father either, I suppose she was disappointed because she considered that my act deserved disapproval. In the afternoon we went with him, I don't remember where. He asked me, “Did you have a good time?” I where?”. “In Chacabuco.” Wrapped in the coldness of someone who knows that he already did what he did and would do it again, I didn't say anything. My father smiled and patted my knee. It wasn't a bad way to parent: to assume that the freedom of his puppy would always plunge him into fear, to accept responsibility for what he himself—with pride—had created.
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#pride #raising