Birthday blues* (Archive Story)

Grrr the archive story has slipped to the top again. Here’s today’s story.

‘It’s my birthday next Thursday.’ I don’t know why I said it, it just slipped out. The group of near-strangers I was talking to responded enthusiastically.

‘Oh that’s brilliant, we should have a party,’ one of them said, was it Jenny or Vicky I don’t know? I’m hopeless with names.

I’d just arrived in a small town in Portugal for a three-month teaching contract, I’d arrived mid-term and felt a bit lost and lonely. Despite being out with the other teachers I felt like an outsider, an alien, as in-jokes and staff-politics flew over my head. So I blurted out the birthday fact to get myself involved. There was only one problem, it was the middle of April and my birthday is in August.

The next day the staffroom was awash with chatter about the party, Jenny or Vicky (or whoever it was) was buzzing around telling me all I needed to know about a birthday in Portugal. I’d decided to go along with it, what harm could it do? I’d never see these people again and I get a few free beers out of it at least and feel more part of the group.

But I soon realised that it wasn’t going to be like that at all. Jenny/Vicky was telling me about the cake. Apparently there is a special local cake that is bought to celebrate birthdays.

‘It’s got fruit and nuts and icing and we all love it. Oh I am so glad it’s your birthday, we thought we’d had them all for this year.’

‘Who buys it?’

‘The birthday boy,’ she said with a smile.

‘Oh’ I said as nonchalantly as possible, ‘how much is it?’ I asked thinking that I would probably make the money back in birthday beers.

’30 Euro’ she said. I spluttered. I looked at her face for signs that she was pulling my leg but she was deadly serious.

‘And then there is the birthday round’ she said.

‘The what?’

‘Well in Portugal it’s the birthday boy, or girl who buys the first drinks in the bar.’

I did a quick calculation, there were 8 teachers, two senior teachers, and 3 admin staff, if everyone came a round of drinks would be around 30 Euro. That was 60 Euro all in.

I had a stark choice to make, I could come clean, tell them it had been a lie, but what would they think of me? Or I could just go ahead with it, save face but allow my credit card to take a beating. I learnt a valuable lesson that day, no matter how desperate you are to fit in, don't tell little white lies they can be very expensive.