The Good Ol' Days

I apologize for not having posted in a while. To be honest, I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to continue with this blog, but I've decided to continue, mostly because I'm afraid of forgetting how to write in English (a rather damning fear for a person of my age and academic situation).
Anyway, last night I went to have dinner with Bruno, Pascaline and their son, Martin. French apartments are rather confusing and have more staircases than residents. Naturally I chose the wrong staircases not once or twice, but three times. The first time I realized quickly that I had chosen "Staircase C" instead of "B" rather quickly with no embarrassing encounters. I was not as lucky the second two times.
In fact, my second attempt at "Staircase B" came after I followed a sign that pointed me in one direction. I knocked on the apartment of two very confused French people who tried to point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, that direction was the other side of their apartment, where I knocked also. Turns out the first staircase was the "Service stairs of Staircase A." Needless to say (I'm very smart) I found the proper stairs and the Rotigs graciously allowed me into their home.
Once I was with the correct people, we spoke exclusively in French which was quite satisfying. The conversation started with a normal pleasantries and eventually moved on to how Bruno and Pascaline had met my dad and what he was like back then. Nothing was exceptionally surprising except that he was EXACTLY how he had said he was. That's quite surprising in its own right.
We eventually moved onto pictures and they were all of these incredible costume and themed parties they had had. One of them was of Greek art and everyone had painted their bodies white and was wearing white sheets and what not. Bobby, a friend of my dad's who I had dinner with last week, had even made a plaster-looking rear that extended into legs... he was a centaur. It was honestly incredible. Some of the costumes in the pictures looked like they had taken weeks to design and make.
That got me thinking about American "theme" parties, and by theme parties and I mean "Girls dress slutty" parties, because that's what theme parties at home tended to be. I think a lot of this stems from fear... people are horrified of dressing in costumes that could be social suicide. If someone makes an effort to make a costume that's awesome... it's embarrassing, not awesome.
Nowadays we're afraid of everything. We don't do this because we could be sued or we don't do that because we won't get into college. Bureaucracy has made it increasingly difficult and nearly impossible to have true adventures. Pascaline described the time with my dad as being a time when they were so many adventures. Adventures these days hardly exist because we're all afraid of being caught, and unfortunately our fear is highly rational.
Just the other day I tried to go to watch the most recent French rugby match in this huge tent (although not huge enough) set up by the Eiffel Tower exclusively for the Rugby World Cup. When we arrived, no one was being let in because the tent was full. We decided to try and sneak, but at every entrance there was someone guarding the door. They even had earpieces like the secret service. All of this was to guard a FREE "access libre" tent. So ironic and stupid.
Read Thomas Friedman's "9/11 is Over" for the bigger picture of my frustrations.
I gotta go... the few adventures left won't stick around forever.