If there’s one thing Panama knows how to do right, then it’s how to party. Any excuse is a good excuse, be it good or bad; I’ve gotten smashed out of my brain for stuff as mundane as getting up in the morning and being alive, getting a new dog, NOT getting a new dog, accomplishing successfully the daunting task of tying my left shoe’s shoelace before my right one (it’s a routine of mine. Breaking it is nothing short of monumental) and of course you have Carnivals, which are pretty much a 4-day stretch of drunken haze where you’re so drunk you simply stop being drunk and you can’t feel your limbs yet somehow you can still control them. We have liquor hangars, where you literally drive into the store and buy your shit without ever stepping out of the car. Everything you could possibly imagine when you go out to party will be available to you within walking distance of no more than 100 meters from your party place, and this I guarantee. Now, if you have to play smartass (a.k.a “awesome”) and throw a house party then it’s a little trickier but the quirks don’t change the fact that when we rock the mic, we rock the mic right. It’s ridiculous how much disposition we have to drink: yesterday I went to china man’s store around the corner from the office and between picking out my noon caffeine intake and shooting the shit with said China man I noticed he had some flyers from a bar that is, upon further pondering, right across the street from my building. Now, I don’t have the flyer with me now but I’ll remember to the best of my capacity what the weekly events roster is for this place:

Wednesdays: - Karaoke live (not sure if there’s prizes, but I do remember something about giving away bottles) and 2 x 1 on all national drinks all night (or until you have to be thrown a few blocks to the nearby hospital to detoxify. Your call, really). This is as good a moment as any to point out that we make pretty much anything when it comes to alcohol. Cheap and good, and always thinking about the consumer… bottles of Seco (what could be considered our national drink) now come in convenient plastic bottles so you don’t break them when you’re hitting yourself on the head with it wondering how your life became the puke-filled mess it is at the moment you realize, upon waking up, that you’re somewhere in the outskirts of Venezuela nearing an petrol refinery and a rottweiller’s licking your balls, which are covered in peanut butter. Of course, you are hand-cuffed to a steel pipe by electric pink, fluffy cuffs. Last you remember, it was Tuesday 3 days ago and you were at a karaoke bar singing “Are You Johnny Ray?” in your attempt to score a threesome with the two shady-looking MILFs at the corner of the piss-poor bar you found for yourself, jackass. *ahem* I apologize for that. Moving on…

Thursdays - I believe it was Salsa night. Free sangria for the ladies All. Night. Long.

Fridays - All-out bash. Not only is there free sangria for girls all night, but the bottles are 2 for 1 so really, man… they might as well just say “get smashed here and score” in big bold letters for everyone in Mars to see.

Saturday - Who cares at this point? Oh, and the sangria still flows on for free for the ladies this night as well.

Seriously. Come on, these people are inviting you to die. But just like this place (I want to go, by the way) there are many others that are realizing that money doesn’t grow on trees and they’ll have to earn our hard-working dollars if they want them, and the only way they can is to lure us in with the promise of cheap liquor and the opposite sex. The Panamanian is a very contradicting person. Now that I think about it, they are of a very social nature but are too socially retarded to admit it. If you’re in your car and you crash into another car, no matter how miniscule the damage everyone will get out and squat and scream and be upset for at least half hour like it’s Defcon 5 or something of the sort. Of course, while they wait for the transit cop to show up an hour later they realize they’ll need to talk to each other if they want to wait patiently. At this time, another aspect of the Panamanian slips in: the “juega vivo.” Panamanians, when it comes to these types of situations where blaming is involved they are masters at spinning the story around in such a way that even if it wasn’t your fault, if you’re not paying attention you yourself will feel guilty afterwards. So when these things happen, be it a car crash or any other social interaction he or she has to do with a stranger the blame will always juggle from one party to the other like a big hot potato. On top of that the lazy-man nature leaks in as well, trying to pass on responsibilities no matter how guilty you really are. As this all happens though, they’re in the middle of the room talking while their little spectacle is blocking the main road and causing a traffic jam of crazy proportions.

To give you an idea of just how out there we really are when it comes to disasters I offer this short story. Back in the early 80’s (I believe) reports started coming in that a tsunami was gonna hit the country. At first nobody believed it but when the threat became real then the entire country went into panic (I’m just assuming here, by the way. The older folks in the audience could have a better perspective than me so please, by all means comment on it if you do know) doing what any self-respecting country would do in the face of disaster: stock up on supplies. The reports, in the meantime, said that the tidal wave would hit us straight from Panama Bay, coming into Avenida Balboa and wipe us off the map. So… what did we do? Hit the mountains or other high ground? Oh, no… no, sir. What we did was stock up on lawn chairs, fill out the coolers with beer and booze and toss it all in the trunk along with BBQ grills and the sorts and closed down Avenida Balboa to sit down, facing the ocean, grilling, dancing and waiting for the tsunami to happen.

We shut off the street, fired up the grills, drank alcohol and waited for our world to end.

Of course, in the end it was a false alarm and nothing happened but it’s a testament to what sort of attitude Panamanians have. We really are unique; I don’t think as many people would’ve been there waiting for the inevitable as we did that one time. For the Y2K fiasco we were the same way, just waiting for the shit to hit the fan and party. There will come other disasters and we will deal with them accordingly, but I’ll be damned if we don’t go out smiling.

It has been close to 20 years since the Panama Invasion and out of all the crazy disasters that have happened to our country it’s this one that remains the most emotional and polarizing. America’s real reasons for intervening in the debunking of the dictator aside, they did us a favor by taking out the guy. The price we had to pay for that was a Panama Canal that wasn’t entirely ours and a restricted, sealed off area that divided the Panamanian population into two camps that would sometimes never see each other. Much grief has Panama gone through because of the United States since we, as a country, have long been regarded as “the bitch,” playing the role to the United States, to Colombia before them and to Spain before them. We’re relatively new, too. We’re young and on our way to walking from crawling so in that regard I personally cut a lot of slack to the country… and besides, I find it ridiculously funny how we’re the kind of country that would party at the midst of a disaster that could wipe us all out. There’s a real charm to that that I love.

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