Talking Skunks With The Brits In Berlin (C, C, T and D.....I told you this would be the title!)

When I was getting ready to leave for the CELTA program four weeks ago it somehow never crossed my mind that, at some point, I would find myself sitting in some little bar in the Berlin suburb of Kreuzberg with a guy from Tennessee trying to explain the smell of a skunk to three young Brits....at 4 in the morning. But that's where I was and that's what we were doing. Actually, I don't think Charlie and Daniel were listening but Chad and I gave Tom, who has never been (pronounced 'ben' not 'bean' if you're from Tennessee!) to the U.S., this very detailed explanation of what a skunk smells like, how hard it is to get rid of the smell if you've been sprayed and how people just have to comment on the odor anytime they smell it (“Ew, do you smell that?” “Yeah, there's a skunk around somewhere.”).
This was an evening that had started out at a different bar where we had gone to an open mic performance night with several of our other classmates. The event was hosted by a group of expat Americans and Brits living in Berlin, one of whom was also in the CELTA program with us. It was very cool, sitting with friends and beer, listening to whoever wanted to get up on stage perform whatever they wanted to perform. Some people read their own poetry. Some read from the works of well known poets. A few people played guitar and sang. One woman did a monologue from her upcoming one woman show and another read from a short story she had written about spending her summers in India when she was a teenager. A couple of performers left us kind of scratching our heads saying, “Huh? I don't get it.” but overall it was very entertaining and a lot of fun.
When it was over, around 12:30, some of us just weren't ready to call it a night yet so we went in search of someplace to continue our, ahem, intellectual interactions. Well, that and... more beer. We found the beer but somehow the intellectual interactions deteriorated into talk of skunks, Bullshit Bingo, and Chad's knowledge of dirt. It then deteriorated further into to a substantial debate about what exactly does Daniel's recently coined term 'Man and Boy' really mean. Once understanding had been checked with a few concept questions we then moved to the free practice stage of the exercise. That of determining just who in our extended group actually possessed the qualities required to hold the coveted title of Man and Boy. This took a while. Needless to say, the next day we were all feeling a bit below standard.