Maybe I oughtta call it the Seven-Tecate Eudemon. I mentioned on Saturday that the neighbor girl was turning 15. She's Mexican, so it's a big deal.
A real big deal.
We got invited two weeks ago. No other neighbors got invited. Of course, none of the others are Catholic and none of the others ever went over and talked with the new neighbors. My wife and I went over a couple of times, talked with them on occasion, and befriended the children and grandfather (the parents are usually working). It wasn't hard. They're good people.
But the simple effort (previously known as "being neighborly") paid off in spades.
We went to Mass at 4:00, then zipped over to the party at 5:00. With the exception of one other guy, my family and I were the only non-Mexicans there. A 5-man Mariachi band (brought in from Chicago) played for every table, complete with loud trumpet, singing that I couldn't understand, and little dance moves.
They brought out reams of food, and gave me two Tecate beers every time I asked for one. I hadn't drank a Tecate since I was 17. It was a lot smoother than I remembered it. I might have to start buying it regularly, if the price is reasonable.
We stuck around for over three hours, long enough to see the 45-minute choreographed dance that the birthday girl and her 6-man court performed. It was really nice. I had watched them rehearsing in their driveway for the last five months. It came together well, and it made me regret that the old country loses its roots when it comes to America . . . every flippin' time, and usually in just a generation or two. Half the Mexican youngsters in the audience looked bored with the whole thing. Some had their cellphones out.
To the anti-Mexicans out there: the Mexicans will assimilate like previous generations did, but it's not entirely a good thing. America, the land of individualism, is also the land of homogenization. And instead of keeping the good things from their old cultures (Saturday night's celebration), the newcomers get rid of the good things and adopt the bad things (obsession with material advancement, as evidenced by the girls playing with their cellphones).
