cute carnivores

coco (aka motoneta) was enjoying a lovely afternoon with tita and tata, watching the beautifully photographed and narrated documentary, the march of the penguins. everyone was enjoying the film, including our very own penguin, a silly inflatable toy, who was so enthralled by his fellow penguins in the wild that he didn't blink once.

suddenly, out of nowhere (well, the gelid waters of the antarctic), jumped a seal and gobbled up a penguin, just like that. coco's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in shock. WHAT?!?! did that seal just eat that penguin? WHY? why would a cute seal eat a cute penguin? tita was equally shocked when this scene violently took over the screen and comforted her granddaughter, while tata fumbled with the remote to change the channel.

coco is big on explanations and asked her grandparents for one immediately. in fact, she talked about this when we got back from our own violent movie, during dinner, before bed and even the next morning. she just couldn't wrap her head around the fact that an animal would do that to another animal and kept repeating, "i love all animals" and "seals are nice anyway", trying to keep loving seals in spite of their killer instincts.

and so, one of earth's most primal truths was revealed to coco: animals eat other animals to survive. we do it, too.

spare change

panzón, motoneta and i are in our car at a toll booth with a big bridge in front of us and a long line of cars behind us. we're so used to paying for everything with plastic that it doesn't occur to us to take extra cash on our road trip. "do you accept cards?", i sweetly ask the attendant. "cash only", she responds robotically. panzón frantically empties out my wallet and his pockets, while the attendant waits surprisingly patiently, a blank expression on her face.

four dollars is not a lot of money, but it sure feels like it when you've only got two one-dollar bills and a bunch of small denomination coins. of course, we come up nine cents short. so i ask the attendant, "what if we don't have enough to pay?". well, it turns out that the camera takes a picture of your license plate and a ticket, along with the bill for four dollars, comes to your home in the mail in a tidy envelope.

but i, the driver, refuse to get a ticket, especially for four measly dollars, so i hold up a finger to the attendant. search and you will find, my friends. yes, i actually find a shiny little dime, tucked into the dark and crusty limbo that is the side of the seat. i nervously try pinching it, but it's just beyond my grasp. nevertheless, with some guidance from panzón, my skinny fingers are able to slide the coin to freedom with ease.

ha! no ticket and we still have a penny left!

pink medicine

my little motoneta has an ear infection, her second this year, and has to take a pink medicine that looks like pepto bismol, but reminds me of kenny. kenny is our dog, a beagle originally from the mojave desert, but currently exiled in mexico.

this dog is the most stubborn being i have ever encountered. i sometimes call him dogini because of his amazing talent as an escape artist. during his first with us, gates had to be extended upwards, walls had to grow, complicated latches had to be installed, and still he managed to escape, until we realized he could not be contained and gave up. and, of course, once the challenge was gone, he stopped escaping.

one time, kenny got sick, so we took him to the vet. apparently, he had a shocking number of uncommon parasites and bacteria (consistent with his behavior in the backyard) in his system and had to take some pink tablets. we stuck one in a hot dog, just like the vet suggested, and kenny devoured the whole thing. then he simply spit the tablet out. you can't trick a trickster, now can you? so, we forced his snout open, shoved the damn thing in his mouth and flushed it down his throat with water. to our amazement and horror, he regurgitated the tablet.

back to the vet's office we went with the dog and the tablets, begging for professional help. he gave us a condescending sneer as he snapped his latex gloves on. ignoring our warning, he brought out a slice of ham, wrapped it around a tablet and attempted the he'll-wolf-the-whole-thing-down method. the triumphant look on his face turned into disbelief as he watched dogini's regurgitating act. he had never seen anything quite like it. yes, he should be in a circus, i thought.

kenny was sitting on the cold metallic table, looking droopy as ever, as the vet calmly began the shove-it-down-his-throat procedure. the vet was firmly holding the dog's snout shut and was explaining how simple this was when done correctly, when his patient started to shake his head violently, spewing pink liquid all over the place, soiling his impeccable white coat and spraying his eyeglasses.

panzón and i couldn't help but laugh as the vet wiped his glasses with a tissue and suggested another, less messy, type of treatment: shots.

belly does not equal baby

so motoneta (formerly known as coco) and i were at the park the other morning, when a very long stroller came through the gate and caught our four eyes. triplets! i explained to my little motoneta that those three babies had all been inside their mom's belly together and came out into this world one right after the other. it blows my mind, but she seemed unfazed.

anyway, she continued playing in the sand and i continued looking at her playing in the sand, when she asked me, "how many babies does that señora have in her belly?". i followed her gaze and found a very large woman walking towards us. she did not look pregnant, but obese, and i had a feeling she spoke spanish. i quickly responded, "um, i don't think she has any babies in her belly". but, of course, this answer was not enough for the extremely inquisitive motoneta, who further investigated by asking, right when the woman had taken a seat on the bench in front of us, "then why is her belly so fat?".

in that moment i looked down at the sand, wishing i could dig our way out of the pickle we were in just like fantastic mr. fox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq2I7xs0Dtc).

motoneta

coco has stopped being coco for a while now. ever since we went to barcelona in may, she's insisted on being called motoneta, which refers to a small motorcycle or moped. she was amazed by these little vehicles zooming past us on passeig de gràcia or parked in clumps everywhere. i think she saw funny faces on each one, kind of like jack black's motorcycle on that new friends yo gabba gabba episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE3JRjcbcX8&feature=related).

so, it was really no surprise that when i asked her this morning about her upcoming birthday party theme, she quickly replied "¡motonetas!". i'm just glad her answer to the halloween costume question was "¡un cocodrilo!".

back to school mexican 80's style

panzón and i were reminiscing the other night about what back to school meant for us growing up in mexico. we travelled back in time to the stuffy and crowded second floor of a librería gonvil, where our mothers took us to buy los útiles escolares. behind the glass counter were a number of female attendants apathetically ready to take on each family's long list of school supplies. sluggishly, they would remove two black bic ballpoint pens from one drawer, two blue from another, two red from another and one green for yet another (i remember teachers being scandalized by those modern all-in-one multi-color pens and banning them from the classroom, even though they were so practical!). we would have to get different kinds of pencils too, like the B and the HB and sometimes even the 2H. and one of those horrid light brown erasers that looked like the soles of the canadá brand shoes most of the kids wore to school. our notebooks would come with lines, grids or blank, but all looked the same on the outside, the scribe logo in red and a mustardy gold.

it seemed to take these women forever to complete each order. one pair of blunt roma scissors, one round plastic pencil sharpener, one ruler to make margins, an assortment of modeling clay bars (like oily play-doh that never dried, and was really hard at first, but then super sticky), one pritt glue stick, one roll of plastic to cover books and notebooks... meanwhile, the place was getting packed, the line stretching down the stairs to the first floor, where the books were waiting patiently.

finally, when your pile of supplies was complete, the attendant would write each and every item on a little piece of paper and take the merchandise away from the counter (and *gasp* the client!). she handed you the little paper to take downstairs and give it to the older woman at the caja, which refers to the cash register, but was literally a glass box with a small opening for transactions, where she would add everything up and tell you (well, your mom) the total to pay. she would then give you a receipt, which you would take to the entrega de mercancía section, where your merchandise (that mountain of shiny supplies you had parted with so abruptly upstairs) would come down through a hole in the ceiling in a christmas paper-wrapped box with a rope attached, a makeshift elevator of sorts, and into the arms of another attendant who would almost always screw up the packages and give you the wrong one, which is why it was vital to always check inside.

all of this, only to lose, in the case of my darling panzón, half of it on the first day of school.

don't look down

my sister was seven, so i was probably three. we were playing outside of our high-rise apartment building in guadalajara, mexico. the twin towers stood out in the once flat city, looming over the country club golf course. we lived in the "poor" tower, which was identical to the "rich" tower, minus its high profile residents. anyway, there was a three story difference between the two free-standing buildings, which was basically a wall that only came up about a foot on the higher side. there was a row of short dying bushes with gaps revealing a little path between the plants and the precipice. and that's where we were.

this is what i remember. some parts might be real and some other parts might be dreams. there might have been a third child there. and there was possibly a rock roughly the size of a brick on the narrow path behind the bushes. my sister tripped and fell over the short wall. down, down, down, three stories. i was scared to look down, but did. i think a guard was nearby and ran towards her. she was lying on the ground. i don't know if it was my own initiative or if the guard shouted at me, but i went to look for my parents.

i ran through the lobby into one of the two elevators, which i had never been on by myself. i could barely reach the button with the six on it, which was our floor. did i jump or did i stand on tippy-toes, stretching my arm and my finger upwards? i remember the smell of the elevator and the feeling of the spring behind the button pushing my finger back and the circle that lit up around it. our door was on the right. did i knock, did i ring the bell, was it open? i ran across the apartment to their room. i found them. then i draw a blank. sometimes i wonder if i did anything at all.

my sister was lucky. she was a gymnast and followed her instincts as she fell head first towards the pavement by flipping in the air and landing on her feet. she broke so many leg bones and a number of vertebrae that my parents feared she might never walk again. but the doctors did such an excellent job that she recovered completely and we seldom remember that this ever happened. yet this event was one of the defining moments of my childhood. i had been brave and capable of helping in an emergency. in short, i had been a hero.