El Gringoqueño

There it was. He had rousted the great
beast, disturbed its slumber. He wasn’t sure if he had meant to or
not. Foolish pride? It glared at him with its steaming fiery
eyes, sizing him up. Its tail twitched in the dim
light. He stood frozen for what seemed an hour, wondering if this
would be the end, if his luck had finally run out. Would this
creature devour him here.

The beast snorted.

That was all.

He had elicited a
snort.

He exhaled, relieved but a bit taken
aback, dare he say disappointed; disappointed not to be dead? He
stood for a moment shaking from the adrenaline and tension. "Beast,
I will make a meal for you yet, " he muttered as he stomped off.

"What was that? D’you say something?"

Billy, glanced back at the news editor,
"Hrmph… nothing."

He knew the story wasn’t worth two
bits, small time political scandal, one where the poor slob
bureaucrat got a luxury car, a few bucks or other such
nonsense. Small time stuff. Everybody was scraping by. It’s just
one tiny little stupid little story awash in a sea of similar tiring
uninteresting shit. He was boring himself thinking about it. Why
the hell had he written the piece in the first place? He fancied
himself an investigative journalist. Journalist, now there’s a funny
word, conjures up a mythical mission to expose the underbelly of the

beast, be the final check and balance to any system of government.
Billy smiled. He felt better again. Gotta pump myself up, he
thought, as he left the office.

"In a slump, Billy?" a woman asked.

"Yeah… no. Well sorta. Too many
stinking rats around this place. Nobody cares about the damn things.
Oh sure they complain about them, but who’s gonna go clean ‘em out?"

"You lost me." She pushed her
glasses against her brow, "Are you trying to get the city
exterminators on your bad side now?"

"Ho ho, you’re a damn
fine comedienne now aren’t you," he chuckled. "No, it’s just
that if I could take all the rats and cram ‘em together into one big
unholy monster, I might have a story, that’s all."

I dismounted my bike, grabbed a couple of dollars from my bike bag, and started into the bakery. Coming up the sidewalk were four young attractive women. A man walking into the bakery ahead of me, stopped short, arching his back and his head at an awkward angle as he gawked. I almost walked into him. I cleared my throat, "Ahem, con permiso." I shook my head, wasn’t that the damnedest thing. He should’ve taken a picture. It would have lasted longer.

I made my way to the line in the panadería. It was just after eight o’clock in the morning, the busiest time. The line was long, the bakery crowded. I tried to get there earlier, but sometimes, you just can’t get out the door.

The young women, stepped into the bakery, chatting loudly, giggling, carrying on. They were noticeable because they were all dressed in filmy, revealing, noodle strap dresses, high heels, and an unusual amount of makeup for so early in the morning. There were indeed hot, and they were about to unleash their wiles on a bakery full of old weak men. Poor devils.

The bakery came to a complete stand-still. It was like a television freeze frame, ala TJ Hooker. A fifty-ish short balding man walking toward where I stood, muttered to his friend, "… e gusta el lechón con gandules." I didn’t hear the first part… Me, te (you), if it was a question or what… but the point was clear. "Pork and pigeon peas" go well together in a sexual way. The innuendo was unmistakable, and I tried to contain a smirk. Only a Puerto Rican can say he likes pork meat and pigeon peas in a way that connotes sex. I mused on comical variations, taking liberty, but couldn’t push it to hyperbole in Spanish. I like marshmellows in my coffee. I like ketchup on my burger. I like little toys with my happy meal. And slowly, with feeling… I like salty… deep fried… artery clogging, pork rinds mashed into gigantic mounds of green bananas. Nope, just cannot push it far enough. Everything sounded sexual in Spanish.

I shook my head to myself, and watched the funny time warp within the bakery. The women were standing directly behind me in line, carrying on, obviously excited by the eyes burrowing holes in their flimsy clothing. I had a good vantage point to observe the leering, as I was directly in its line of site, and despite being clad in a bright red spandex skin suit, bike helmet, and sunglasses, was completely invisible. I was a camouflaged nature photographer, dressed in bright orange, invisible to the color-blind wild beasts. It was absurd. It was hilarious. I continued to watch the reactions from behind my bright blue lenses, the population of older men visually undressing the women with their unabashed desires and their longing gazes. These people have not even the tiniest slice of shame, their decorum thinly dressed in colorful food metaphors.

I asked Esteban for a dozen eggs. "Esteban, I don’t have an egg carton today, do you think you could rig me something up?"

"Sure," he said as he proceeded to put the eggs in a paper bag.

"Um, do you think you could put them in a cardboard container? I’m on my bicycle. They’ll surely break in a paper bag."

"Oh, sorry, he proceeded to break down one of the cardboard trays used to deliver the eggs, and put it inside a plastic bag."

"Um, do you think you could put some plastic wrap around it. They’ll surely fall out. Sorry for the bother. Next time I’ll be sure to bring my receptacle."

"No bother, really. Service is why we are here." And he handed me five eggs crudely wrapped in plastic.

"Esteban, I wanted – Um, nevermind, good day." I wasn’t going to get my twelve eggs today. The sirens had conspired with the gods to keep me from my goal.

Jaimito, leaned his elbow on the window of his truck. It was going to be a long day. He was glad he’d gotten up at the crack of dawn, gathered up his crew and shoved off in the twinkle of new light. He’d roared out over the road in his shiny yellow dump truck, loaded with blocks. He had more blocks than he could haul in one vehicle, so he loaded the excess in a smallish VW beetle, cramming them in through the windows and hatch until there was room for only the driver. He had to get the materials to the project site, and Jaimito was a resourceful fellow. “Can’t be done” was a phrase not in his vocabulary.

The road in the early morning was twisted and bumpy. He down-shifted and roared over a rump shaped mound. He smiled and let out a yip. The morning did that to you, filled you up with so much optimism that even small victories were cause for celebration. The way was filled with craggy opportunities for victory, and Jaimito passed the time pretending that each bump was a great and wondrous obstacle, fitted especially for him to conquer.

Upon arrival at the work site, Jaimito and his crew set about unloading the blocks, and staging them strategically. It became apparent immediately that there was a problem with the grading. There was a large bump where the plans required a level surface. This was not going to do.

“We’re going to need to move this earth!” Jaimito exclaimed. “Let’s get these things out of here.” Large pillow like rocks were quickly dispatched to lower ground. “Hmm, we still have a problem with this giant vein of protruding bedrock here,” he said aloud. Time to get the rock pulverizers.

This was fun work. Crushing rock had to be the best job on the planet. He imagined he was a large ancient elemental force and with a whoop and a holler, the rock crumbled before his hydraulics and explosives. Where others saw obstacles, Jaimito saw opportunities, and where there was drudgery, Jaimito made fun. Perhaps it was no coincidence that his crew was the most productive, the most motivated.

“Okay, men,” he exclaimed. “We’re all through, go ahead and leave the vehicles and material where they are. We’ll get an early start tomorrow.” And with that they headed home leaving the shiny yellow dump truck, and the yellow VW Beetle and the blocks behind in the cleared area where he had dispatched the giant rock.

or, "Hanging out in a European Café."

Laura and I had an early morning meeting at a Cyber Cafe here in
Puerto Rico, in Rio Piedras. We arrived early because traffic was
light due to the day of remembrance for President Ronald Reagan.
What are we going to do for half an hour in Rio
Piedras, we asked ourselves?

"You know it kinda feels like we’re in a small European town
square," Laura remarked.

"Yeah," I said, "If you cover your eyes, your ears,
your nose, and your sense of aesthetic." I chuckled at my own
joke. Laura didn’t laugh. I repeated it in a lame attempt to get a
smile at least. She giggled slightly.

Then, in her ever indomitable spirit of can-do, she stated, "Let’s
see if there’s a coffee shop." We took a couple of steps up the
block, passed a stray dog, a homeless man, a coin operated laundry
mat, and abandoned our search.

"Hmmm, Europe, you say?" I chuckled again.

"Let’s check behind this street. I ambled off at Laura’s
heels like the dutiful dog that I am. It was eight in the morning
and already it was hot. I began to sweat as we walked across a large
parking lot to an adjacent street. "Hey, this looks promising,"
Laura said, nodding toward a corner café.

"Yeah and as we walk in, I hope we
don’t startle the grizzled old woman as she finishes her cigarette in
her nightgown." It looked like that kind of
place.

Once we stepped inside, the atmosphere
changed. Gone were my visions of an old woman in her pajamas with a
shotgun and a cigarette clenched between her teeth. No, they were
replaced by the cold grim reality of a couple of college kids in a
sparsely established tiny corner student hangout dump.

"Well, we’re here, I guess. What
should we have?" I mused. I checked out the selection. "Let’s
get quesitos and coffee. That okay with you?"

"Sure." I ordered two
expresos (that’s espresso in Spanish for you snobs out there), and two cream cheese pastry
rolls. We scoped out a clean table near a window with decent chairs
and sat down. We were then next to the street
in front of a large glass window. As the second homeless man passed,
Laura remarked.

"Don’t you just have the feel of a
European café nestled here against the window gazing at the
street?" She started to laugh.

"You know I like hanging out with
you, Laura. We should do these mini dates more often. I’m having
fun in my European café."

Laura started laughing harder and a
tear formed in her eye. "And you know if we put chairs out on
the sidewalk we could drink in the rich aroma of urine." She
started to lose it in a giggle fit, mascara streaming down here face.

With a flick of my wrist and a wistful
French flourish I sighed, "Aahh," and sat back in an
artful recline. Laura could not contain herself as she turned into a
hapless puddle of giggles and tears. She could barely sip her coffee
and eat her pastry. We commented on the buildings, how wonderfully
artful they were, with their square corners covered in mold and
pealing paint, and their imaginative shapes, concrete boxes stacked
one on top of each other for as far as the eye could see.

"This is the
life," I said. "An eternity of European cafes couldn’t replace this one moment I’ve spent with you, my dear."

We recently endured two straight weeks of rain, over 24 inches of
constant precipitation from morning, through the afternoon, during the
night. It has been tough. I don’t think I’ve endured being inside for
so long in a good many years. You get used to being able to go out
everyday and do some sort of activity. In Puerto Rico, you get sudden
cloud bursts, but in a few minutes that tropical sun mops it up and
life goes on.

Monday was my first morning bike ride in over
two weeks, and it felt good. My chain had rusted a bit from the
humidity. Annoying. You leave your keys a couple of days on the key
holder and you get rusty keys. Such is life.

"I’d like a dozen eggs, " I said to Estéban.

"There are none," he replied.

I sighed, drat. No eggs. I got my milk and headed out. It started raining again. Can’t catch a break, can I?

Tuesday
rolled around, and it’s a welcome relief, sunny and mild. Ooops, what’s
this? Black clouds were rolling in. I headed out in a hurry, hoping to
beat the inundation that was sure to come.

"Any eggs today?" I asked.

Estéban chuckled and checked with the guy behind the counter. "Yeah, looks like there’s enough. We can spare a dozen."

I
thought to myself. Weird, they’re still short on eggs. Then it hit me.
Chickens don’t lay when it’s raining hard. It bothers them. An unhappy
chicken is a non-laying chicken. I remembered the last time we were hit
with tropical storms, there was a short term egg shortage on the island.

The guy next to me, curious, asked idly how much they were. "How much is a dozen?"

Estéban,
got a twinkle in his eye. He chuckled and recounted an incident where a
woman asked him that same question.  "’¿Cuanto es una docena?’ she
asked me, "Twelve little eggs, I told her. Doce huevitos. You know she
got mad? Told me that was more than she had expected."

The whole bakery started rolling. Chuckles went all around, and the mood was genial.

"Listen, are you waiting for a flood? Man, look at those pants."

"Hey, I like them like that. I’m prepared at all times!"

"And you, look at that old guayabera, VERY stylish."

"This shirt is quality. Q-u-a-l-i-t-y. I’ve had this shirt for over 15 years. You can’t get that kind of quality today."

"Oh, sure," he laughed poking the man’s shirt.

"Man, check that out?" pointing to a sexy bombshell on the morning TV show.

"Ay Dios Mío mami."

"I’d like a slice of that!"

"What are you gonna get?" Another asked.

"Coffee and some oatmeal."

"To go?"

"Hey, let a man finish his coffee and toast. You have some hurry?"

"Well some people have things to do. We can’t sit around on our asses and pretend to be useful."

Chuckles all around.

(Overheard conversation of a group of three 60 year old+ in a local bakery in Puerto Rico).

Just got in from a wonderful party, so I’m a little buzzed. Well, actually, I can’t feel my fingers as I type this. Chuckle. My sister-in-law, who is Lebanese, had an Arab-Lebanese party. Wow, what a nice time. We drank, smoked the water pipe, laughed, told stories, ate tabbouleh, babacanush, humus, kabobs of chicken, and a bunch of things that I will never ever be able to spell.

Juan Carlos brought some fabulous Rioja red wine. That got the thing rolling as we took liberally of these fermented red grapes. Todd, an ethnic American, who became friends with Miray’s brother, Lebanon and his party crew, was an old hat with the whole thing. He knew most of the basic Arabic terms and greetings, and seemed comfortable with his assimilation into his adopted context outside of his own. He reminded me a little bit of myself with the Puerto Rican crowd. Something about them demanded my attention. They accepted me and I fell in, eventually marrying into the culture. Todd, Mikey, Lebanon and Rami were a party group extraordinaire.

Then somebody brought a couple of water pipes, one of which was new, being used in a group setting for the first time. They fiddled with it, complaining about the tightness, the newness of the fitting, poking holes in the aluminum foil to aerate the tobacco. No good, and away and away we puffed pulling the heat into the tobacco through the water and into our mouths trying to get a good draw. The cherry infused smoke was aromatic and we were even able to convince most of the women to give it a go.

A dance began with a particularly rhythmic song, as the hostess and her brother, Lebanon began to circle in a traditional form. Arm in arm they circled, laughing and dancing, winding their way through the house.

Most of the evening was spend chuckling, drinking, sharing stories and trying to get a good draw on the water pipes. I spend my fair share drawing deeply. It was truly wonderful, and eventually we began to get a good smoke. "This pipe is smoking good now," they would say, as they fiddled with the other. I came and I went, as I chased down Jaimito, checked on Olaia and Laura to see how they were and what they were up to, but I kept making my way back to that pipe. There was just something about it.

I was an extremely nice time because of how differently the experiences played out from what I’m used to. It was interesting and wonderful to enjoy good times, but in a slightly different context. The brotherhood of man, shared over tobacco, something as old as human-kind itself, takes on a perspective of closeness, seen from an angle that makes me take notice. Sharing the water pipe, puffing, and laughing and passing, gives a visceral and immediate context to our lives. Sometimes we forget about the commonality we all share, and it is a dead dried plant and some spittle that brings it back into focus. What am I talking about? What else could that be? We all come into this life the same way and we all leave it eventually. What we miss is all those wonderful details in the middle, those simple banal things upon which we rarely focus, quickly and recklessly moving onto the next thing, the next destination. The same feeling, I believe, can be found in other rituals around the world, a Japanese tea ceremony, a Basque cider house, Catholic mass, tribal or native dance, or a simple sharing of the hunt, alcohol, or smoke. Taken in moderation and shared amongst people in a certain context they can be powerful rituals of remembrance.

Bah, but I write such drivel. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to communicate this in a better fashion. I feel like I do it such little justice with these numb fingers and this swirling "mente" of mine.

This is for you, little apple. I write these words of remembrance.

I
was eating an apple while driving home from the Puerto Rico Products
Association today. I was travelling through the urban setting, a
decidedly un-vegetation friendly environment. I reflected that if I had
been in the country, I would have tossed my apple core from the car
into the tropical foliage. Drat, I am here in the city. The apple core
is an eye sore. How would I like apple cores on my side walk, sitting
there, collecting ants and turning brown in the hot sun? The apple that
falls on the concrete of the city has no chance for life, and in the
best of cases is an ugly mess.

In the country, though, it
would have a chance to grow into an apple tree. Ah, but I have eaten
the flesh of the apple, the flesh that would give its small seeds the
nourishment for new life. I have done such violence to these poor
little things. They would stand no chance to achieve life if left to
their own devices. They are done whether on the side walk or the
forest. They were done in by me, by my hungry apple flesh eating mouth.

The poor devils.

I had trouble falling asleep last night, probably the late dinner
and the excitement of Olaia’s sleep-over with her cousins, Mariam and
Robertito. Whatever it was, I tossed and turned before falling into a
shallow slumber. I began to have a disquieting nightmare.

I
find myself in a hospital, with rows of patients. It’s strangely bright
and open, almost as if it’s in my house. Something is happening,
something big, tragic. I must get my family out, I think to myself. Out
of where and from what, I can’t say, but there’s this urgency to move
or run or something. There is this hurried hopeful movement all around.
Something is coming, but it can be dealt with, or so everyone believes.

I
snap from the dream briefly and focus on my sleeping self. I’m asleep,
I halfway realize, and then as if to make sense of the disconnect, my
dream seizes upon the realization and weaves it into the plot.

You
are asleep. You know who comes for you in your sleep. There is some
realization that there is a Freddy Crouger, nightmare type scenario
playing out, and even though I’ve never seen a single slasher movie in
my life, I’m now in one. He’s coming for you, and there is nowhere to
hide. I choke, the realization coming over me. There is only a split
second of angst for myself, as I realize that I am in control. But the
rest? These people here don’t know they are safe, that they are in
control. I begin to run around, making tons of noise. "I know who you
are!! You can’t hurt these people. You can’t hurt me. You’ll all be
okay," I shout. I’m getting mad now. I want to find this character and
tear his head off.

Suddenly, I’m accompanied by a middle-aged Mia
Sara, Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off." We’re
walking inside a plush carpeted hotel. The hallways are wide and tall,
and everything looks like it’s covered with various earth-toned crushed
velvet. She is talking to me, in a sort of evil villain/philosopher
tone. "You will have a choice," she says. She is communicating with me
in some way beyond talking. I am filled with feelings, emotions,
anxiousness at what is to come. I’m unsure why I am here or what I am
to do.

"Answer me truthfully," I say to her, for some reason knowing she cannot lie, "am I in Hell?"

"Yes."
And she dissappears. I follow the corridor and exit into a dark street.
It still feels closed in, like a movie set of Las Vegas. I am drenched
in seeminess. It’s not unpleasant, just drenched in some sort of
manifestation of selfishness, lust, greed. Women proposition me on the
street in their high heels, fishnets, and bustieres. Street hustlers
call my name, with gay grins and bejeweled hands. "Comeon, wanna try
yer luck." It’s tempting. Looks like it might be fun. Just for second,
I think…. no feel, this isn’t so bad. It’s sad, but not evil as I had
imagined it.

I am traveling now through the streets, flying,
running, I don’t know which. I absorb the scene before me with ever
increasing ownership, and I keep accelerating until it is all so much
blur or images, faces, seeminess, sex, greed, gluttony, envy,
aimlessness, despair, and loneliness. I boldly shout to them, "Repent!!
Repent!! Jesus – God loves you! You are all loved by God." I fix on
myself, and how I sound. Repent, evil doers was not my intent. I hear
in my head the cries of a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher, facing
his congregation wagging his finger at the unworthy. My feeling as I
fly through the wasteland and all the emptiness is not that they are
evil, but that they are lost, worthy of love. "Repent!" is a call to
reach out their hands, and to not let their despair keep them from
redemption. I am aware I am in Hell, and I know with every fiber of my
being that Hell cannot exist where there is a willingness to be
redeemed. If the love of the Creator is infinite, there is no possible
reason for these poor creatures to live in the dark unless they choose
to. And no one, I know, would willingly choose to give up being loved.
I will deliver the message, "Repent, and ye shall be saved!!" I am
filled with such strength, force of will, to be saying such things. I
want to save them all, share with them what I know. No matter how far
you have fallen, you can still be saved. I know this.

And on a
dark street I come to an instant stop. In front of me are three figures
ready to accost me. I take a bold step toward them to deliver my
message. They immediately transform into monsters dripping blood,
fingers stretched out in contorted razor sharp claws, eyes rolled back,
all night of the living dead-like. They had been normal human figures a
moment earlier, but suddenly turn hideously grotesque.

I shrink
for a millisecond. I am startled, and fear for a brief instant, but it
isn’t fear of dying or being attacked, it is a point of infinite
revulsion, like all possible nausea compacted into an impossibly short
period of time. Get away from me, I think.

And as quickly as it
had come, the next moments fill me with ever increasing compassion and
I say, "fill me" because I don’t get the sense that I was the one doing
it. I become bolder and bolder. My speed picks up again, and I race
toward the figure on my right at an impossible rate. I embrace his
torso and speed off, my arms wrapped as tightly as I can possibly
imagine around his breast, him facing away from me, my chin on his
shoulder. "Don’t worry, He loves you." And my embrace strengthens like
my life depends on it. I will hold onto you.

I ask him how his
life had been in this place. Had it been tough. He tells me at first it
wasn’t so hard, but then there were those that beat him. He had been
kicked down and bloodied, living on the street, in the cold for so
long. "It’s not so bad." I ask him what it was like before, in life.
"The same," he says.

The night fades, replaced by a brightly
lit plaza of intricate stone work. I come to a stop and release this
person to whom I had clung to tightly.

"Sorry, about that," I say wiping spittle off his shoulder.

And
I awake in a sweat, hot as hell, my pillow wet from drool. Yeech. I
adjust my covers and sigh. "Hon, I just had the weirdest dream. I don’t
even know if I can call it a dream."

This morning I did my two mile walk
with Jaimito in his jogger stroller. He usually sings to me, babbling
and carrying on with a musical tune. He likes music. He’s always
dancing and singing. The Wiggles, an Australian kids troupe, on the
Disney channel are his favorite characters. or the "-ggles"
as he says. Today, though he didn’t sing, just happily sucked his
bottle of juice, pulling it from his mouth to point out sights of
interest along the way. We saw trees, palm trees, a cement truck and
an airplane. Jaimito loves airplanes, or "a-bi" as he says.
I think it’s a cross between airplane and avión, in spanish.
"A-bo, a-bo," he says turning his head up to me, pointing
to a tree. I assume "a-bo" is arbol or "tree" in
spanish. Wow, kids sure are good on the economy of language. Such
clever creatures. Yeah, Daddy, why do you have all these distinct
words. All I need to do is make a sound and point. See? Easy as pie.

Jaimito and I got back from our little
walk, and had some breakfast. He loves fruit Kixs cereal. I don’t
complain, because he can’t make a mess with it, and after all, it is
"Kid tested, Mother approved." He loves to share with me,
digging into the little cup of cereal with his dexterous deditos and
feeding me the purple ones. Why purple? I have asked him the same
question myself – perhaps when he can talk, he will reveal to me his
hidden agenda.

Yogurt is his other favorite. Cereal
and yogurt… ah, the stuff of which dreams are made, ahh, but,
Daddy, I need some of your cereal too, or actually just the milk.

Daddy likes to eat Honey Bunches of
Oats, with chocolate chips sprinkled on top. I’m bad, I know, but
little Mr. So-and-so likes to mooch the milk from me. He makes his
dramatic "mmmmmmp" sounds and smiles at me after each
successful raid into my zone, pushing his pushy wiggle-puss into my
bowl. I call him my "Moochie" or "Cachetero"
(cheeky-one) on account of his bulging cheeks.

This has become our morning ritual.

After coffee, I checked my email,
morning geek news (slashdot.org),
world news (www.msnbc.com), and
settled into work on Altabox 4.0.

This afternoon, we had a lunch date
with a local state senator to build a strategy to communicate our
vision for the tech sector with what will be, most assuredly the next
governor of Puerto Rico. The rest of the morning was uneventful, and
we headed out for our lunch.

I usually drive, because although Laura
is a good and competent driver, she’s got a lead foot. The new and
improved phlegmatic Jim, has become a passive slowpoke, as it is the
only way I can feel sane. Thanks Dad. I was pulling out of our
sub-division when the car in front of me just stopped. A woman got
out and ran across the street. Huh? I honked, what the hell is she
doing? And just as I honked, I saw a crumpled shape lying in a ditch
on the other side of the street. I pulled to the side, and leaped
from the car to screams and clamor.

Apparently there was a slight accident,
two cars had hit each other, but caught up in it was an old woman, a
pedestrian who was walking along the side of the road. As the two
idiots drivers fought and fretted about their situation, the poor
woman lay bleeding in a drainage ditch, water flowing freely around
her.

I raced over to her, fixated on this
poor figure laying in the blood. Is she dead? I didn’t see the
accident, so I didn’t know how severe it was. It wasn’t clear exactly
what had happened. Did she fall? Was she hit? I reached her limp
form, and checked immediately to see if she was alive, breathing. I
felt awkward. This stuff only happens in the movies, doesn’t it? I
was shaking, the adrenaline had kicked in. I couldn’t help it. I was
mentally calm and in control, but my body had other ideas as it
decided to go into crisis mode. The people standing around me are all
offered "helpful" suggestions. Don’t move her, was pretty
much all they could say, I guess they were content to just stand
there and gawk while this bleeding woman lay in a ditch.

I touched her shoulder and gave her
upper torso a little tug. First thing you do in a crisis is talk to
the patient. Find out if they are okay, if they can tell you where it
hurts or where they are hurt. First aid is trained frequently in the
Army, repetitively, so that in the moment you don’t have to think.

Say there’s an explosion, your buddy
goes down, and you immediately start first aid, checking limbs,
tearing open clothes, thinking about tourniquets. "Hey dumbass,
I’m fine. Just stunned, check out the rest of the guys." If the
patient can talk, they can help you out. Basic stuff, but you’d be
amazed how often people forget.

So this woman, was stunned, a little
groggy. I recognized her from the first. She’s who, growing up in N.
Country, St. Louis, we all knew as the "Walking Lady," a
woman seen at all hours of the day, in all seasons walking around,
going shopping, running all her errands on foot. Here, lying in a
drainage ditch was our very own, "Walking Lady," Paquita as
she is called. Laura and I wondered if she was homeless, her
weathered and somewhat tattered appearance fit the bill. She lives in
our neighborhood, however. I see her most mornings as I head out on
my morning bike rides. We usually exchange smiles.

I checked her head. Looks okay, she’s
got a cut across her eyebrow. That’s where ALL the blood was coming
from. Yeah, I remember those injuries all too well. Cut above the eye
bleeds like crazy. You look like Carrie. I check around her head,
talking to her. "Does it hurt any where else?" She’s still
groggy, I can’t hear her. "You know me," I say to her,
"It’s me, from the bicycle. We meet each other every morning
when I go out on my bicycle."

She smiled. I smiled back, and imagined
myself, this huge gringo covered in blood crouched in a ditch holding
this ninety pound little old lady, stroking her head.

I enlisted the aid of a by-stander to
move her from the ditch into the shade. I was amazed at how hard it
was to lift her small frame out of the ditch. I stumbled and stepped
on her hand. I felt terrible about that. Poor thing. A limp weight is
hard to lift. Jeez. A worker from the Energy Authority, trained in
first aid arrived at the scene. He had his complete first aid kit,
oxygen, bandages, blood pressure device, etc. He went to work, while
I told her jokes and held her hand. I made her smile as her blood
pressure and pulse came back normal. "Ah, as healthy as a twenty
year old," I said.

It was super hot in the noon day,
equatorial sun. I was dressed for a business lunch, and not only was
I drenched in blood, I was pouring sweat like a thoroughbred. A man
began to fan me with a piece of cardboard he found on the road. Ah,
that felt good.

The ambulance arrived finally, and I
got out of the way. They rolled her onto the stretcher and hoisted
her up. I stayed with her to see her off. "Paquita, may you get
better soon. We’ll see each other next week, you walking, me on my
bicycle." She smiled and we parted ways.

In the end, I didn’t do anything
really. I would have been more prepared to do CPR or mouth to mouth,
but I felt good for having reacted so quickly and taking charge while
everybody else fretted and stood idle, especially the two idiots in
the cars that caused the accident in the first place. Like I said,
though, I didn’t really do anything, but today, the 25th of November
2003, I eased someone’s pain and made a new friend.