It’s not just that I have a blog – which I guess you are fine with, as this is my fourth post already and you’re still reading -, I have a much more unsettling presence on the web. It’s called the Beckers family forum. It is a mildly upsetting place where my family, who made an effort to move to the most extreme corners of the world, meets to write about what a shame it is that we don’t see each other more often and how we, funny how things go, actually know so little about one another. It is a confusing mishmash of younger cousins posting mysterious flash creations, uncles exchanging comments on the current football/rugby/golf finals and aunts providing usefull tips on health and general guidestones for leading a spiritually balanced life.
It’s a battlefield. I never know what to tell about my life, and just how much honesty is the appropriate amount. Because: how much can the Beckers family tolerate? Should I mention coffee, chocolate and the carefully measured amount of alcohol are amoung my greatest pleasures in life – as a response to a post in which the whole family was goodheartedly warned that coffee, chocolate and even measured amounts of alcohol are among the greatest provokers of cancer? Would that be going too far? At what point would I wish I had kept my feelings and whereabouts to – say, my blog?
It turned out that that point was mentioning Hobnox.
I did it with a pure heart, carrying out only the very best of intentions. And my grandmother – my dear, dear grandmother, who is at least 50% Mother Therese incarnate, who is always interested in and always cares for anything her grandchildren do, who sat down at the computer at the age of 85 and learned how to send emails and browse the web -, that grandmother, visiting the Hobnox Evolution site, she snapped.
” …what on earth is this all about!”
she cried.
“what on earth are they up to !???”
she gasped. She noted that this was the first time that she truly noticed the twofold generation gap. And she let us take it from there:
“oke okeeee go on you youth go on with much pleasure and succes !!!”
Coming from perhaps the first senior to have stepped on the Hobnox Evolution ground, I take it that these wishes will mean good luck.
