Good morning, folks: the morning ritual that lives on at the Guardería

Good morning, folks: the morning ritual nobody skips

There's a time when a group of people greet each other without fail. At 5:53 in the morning, with the coffee maker not yet plugged in, someone is already 'at your service'. It's not a social network, it's not a work group: it's the starting gun for a day that, at the Guardería, always opens the same way. A 'how are you facing this Tuesday?' and a string of mentions are all it takes for the day to begin.

The morning greeting works like a thermometer. Everyone arrives with their own thing: one announces a weigh-in and a roast chicken with vegetables; another drags along a bad back that, he says, leaves him 'in pieces' and suspects it's his age. The conversation quickly drifts toward jokes and double entendres, with the ease of people who know the territory.

The weigh-in as an excuse to meet again

The first message of the day doesn't ask for analysis or news. It asks for company. 'I'm going to go all in with the roast chicken and vegetables, another weigh-in day,' writes one of the early risers. It's the digital version of coffee at the bar: nobody comes to solve the world's problems, but everyone comes back.

At that hour, the body is the first topic. Back pain appears as a shared complaint, with that mix of humor and resignation that kicks in after a certain age. 'It feels like I've broken into pieces,' one of them says. The reply doesn't take long: someone asks about the specialist of the moment to confirm the diagnosis. Age as the universal alibi.

From greeting to wisecrack: the inevitable drift

What starts as a good morning ends, within a few messages, in an exchange of risqué comebacks. Double entendres run rampant and the conversation becomes a game of wit where whoever doesn't play along loses. The Guardería, when all is said and done, is that: a playground where the greeting is the door and the joke is the currency.

There's also someone back from a visit who tells what they saw along the way. 'There were piles of them,' he says, in that coded way of speaking only regulars understand. The story is confusing for the newcomer, but the group trinc it without missing a beat. Complicity is the real language.

A ritual that asks no permission

The morning greeting doesn't need news to justify it. It's a habit that holds itself up, like the seven o'clock coffee or the dog walk. The question 'how are you facing this Tuesday?' isn't looking for a specific answer: it's looking for someone to reply. And there's always someone.

As the messages pile up, the tone heats up, topics cross over and the thread becomes what it always was: a bar-room chat without the bar. The Guardería doesn't promise useful information or shrewd analysis. It promises company at just past five in the morning. And, judging by the response, that's still a scarce commodity.