Open the Whisky By Darren Baker

česky

I never had a birthday party like this one before. I was sitting alone in the office at the school where I worked when suddenly the door came flying open. The entire staff began walking in single-file to shake my hand and wish me all the best. Afterwards a few of them got together to sing a couple bars of Happy Birthday to me.

We all then stood around making small talk. It turned out to be very small because I didn't know their language and most of them didn't know mine. Our body language, however, was absolutely clear. We were all expecting something. What they were expecting I had no idea. After all, it was my birthday. It wasn't until after they had filed out - noticeably less taken with me than when they first walked in - did I learn that in this country, you're the one who's supposed to provide the cake, sandwiches and other tasty morsels when it's your birthday. You have to wait on your guests, not the other way around. Man, was that a surprise. If someone has a lot of close friends and family, he might well regret the day he was ever born.

Fortunately, that wasn't my case. I had only a bunch of hungry teachers to worry about. So the next year I made sure I did everything right. I cleared off one of the desks in the office and laid out all kinds of pastries and sandwiches I bought from a local deli. Everything looked splendid. The problem was nobody showed up. Perhaps they had forgotten, perhaps they hadn't, it depended on how you looked at it.

My colleague in the office left to round everyone up and those that eventually arrived were certainly happy to see that I had learned my lesson. They even presented me with a gift, a bottle of whisky. I expressed my gratitude and invited them to help themselves to the spread before them. That they did, but when the bell rang, they left with the same strange look they had had on their faces the year before. Apparently the cakes and sandwiches weren't enough. After they were gone, I asked my colleague, "What did I do wrong this time?" And she said, "You didn't open the whisky."

The whisky?

"Aha, so the whisky wasn't a gift, rather they brought it to drink to my birthday. Right?"

"No, no, it was a gift all right, but they wanted to drink it nevertheless."