Compliment

Preliminary note: The following is a very brief fictional story, with some autobiographical notes that have been sprinkled throughout, but above all it is a tribute to the greatest: Sir Paul McCartney. The attempt at caricature has the same culprit of the story. The original text in Spanish can be read here: https://blogs.elespectador.com/actualidad/lineas-de-arena/piropo/

Her name was Olga, and she seemed to me to be the prettiest girl in the world or at least at the Inmaculada Concepción school. She entered eighth grade, and I was in ninth, but I had already fallen in love when I saw her in a picture, with which Daniel Bohórquez’s father promoted his business, a photography studio in the La Despensa neighborhood, south of Bogotá.

I remember very well, when I finally decided to say something to her, the most beautiful compliment I could imagine. It was at recess, on a Thursday at eleven in the morning.

– Hello – I said.

– Hello – she answered, and her light brown eyes lit up, covering me with her halo of bright.

– Can I tell you something?

– Of course – and I noticed her expectant with a hint of excitement.

– You look like Paul McCartney!

Her face turned into a frame-by-frame movie, an intrigued expression, true stupor, frank anger and I think she refrained from saying anything rude to me, because she still had a little sympathy, she simply turned around, as if she wanted to whip me with her long hair, with those thousand lashes on my face. She got up and walked away forever.

I was never able to explain to her that I had tried to compare her with the symbol of an era that provoked in me a torrent of beautiful things, of an incomparable music that I had discovered with Daniel, the same guy, son of his father’s photographer, with whom we were thinking of creating a musical group, imitating the immortal Beatles.

In short, that face with its kind shapes, small mouth and lively but at the same time melancholic expression, seemed to me like the greatest musician of our generation. There was no love story, but the experience helped me to never invent compliments again.

Dixon Acosta Medellín

On what I still call Twitter, you can find me at break time as @dixonmedellin