Hanging Out

At age twelve, I woke up even earlier for school and used to wash my face with a Cacharel soap poetically called Anais Anais. This soap didn't have any dermatological benefits but I believed in its smell. In 8th grade, I was hanging out at school before classes and this face wash was part of the ritual.


My 8th grader also likes to hang out with his friends before classes and I indulge him with that natural process of adolescence. I wake him up early, encourage him to wash his face with Nivea and we are usually the first family to arrive at school. His friends join him and they exchange their stories. Surely, these are the best times at school.


When I went to boarding school, and despite the Geneva winter cold and my aversion for smoking, I used to hang out with the cool kids who smoked, at the gates of the school after our dinner, before we went back to the dorms for after dinner studying. I still remember the kids that used to hang out there, how some guys were very handsome and popular, what silly topics we used to talk about. Hanging out is an art because it only takes a few minutes. But I was always well groomed and ready for that socialization.


My fortune was different in a woman's college, so I focused on more scholastic and stopped hanging out. But I never forgot the art of hanging out, which I believe is part and parcel of growing up, so it resumed in graduate school. We used to hang out at Harvard Cafe which wasn't in Cambridge, far from! It was on glittzy Newberry street and all the non-Harvard students of Middle Eastern origin used to hang out there when the weather was nice!