From Crazy Bad to Crazy Good

From Crazy Bad to Crazy Good

Filed under Blog Notes

Aug 15

Many years ago, my brother got me a job as a receptionist at Arthur Andersen. Every day that I went to that job was a day steeped in martyrdom, and there is still no job in the world that I could be less suited for, but I was grimly determined to pay the price for having been a fabulous party girl.

And so each morning I put on some awful two piece dress from the Junior League consignment store, along with sneakers and socks and a tote bag filled with frozen Weightwatcher lunches and self help books. Then I would walk past the giant asphalt company owned by the boyfriend who had dumped me when I was a fabulous party girl (muttering to myself about how I was better off without him. Him and his freaking dough. Money isn’t everything. Hmph. ) to the subway that transported me from Virginia to Farragut Square in D.C.

One sad day I ate a banana while waiting for the train, and stuffed the peel into my bag when it arrived. Walking the final block to my office on 16th street, I saw a bag lady coming toward me. As she approached, the little details that announced her as crazy and homeless revealed themselves more clearly. The sneakers. The frumpy dress. The bag stuffed full of crazy person trash, even garbage. Look! the poor old bat had a banana peel hanging out of…… Oh.
Exactly.

The mirrored doors.

Nothing actually happened as a result of that moment. I continued to show up at work like Jesus punching in to the timeclock at the bottom of the cross, and trying to show my gratitude to a universe that had rescued me from liver damage or a lengthy incarceration by being as miserable as possible.

What’s that, you ask? What the hell does all this have to with me living in Mexico? Well.

The other day I was walking my celebrity Mexican Street dogs, Millie and Lupi. Music was spilling out of windows like so many circles of light from the streetlamps, so that when you stepped out of the pool of cheeful mariachi, you immediately stepped into the next one of quivering bolero. Once in a while, more than one kind of music overlapped and it should have sounded like a traffic accident, but it never did.

We passed painters singing and truck drivers thumping their steering wheels in time to the reggaeton, and when we passed the mini golf course I found myself humming along to the music being played over the loudspeakers.

Let me pause here to tell you something about the San Antonio Tlayacapan mini golf course. I love it better than almost anything in this country that is full of things that I love.

When we first moved here, the golf course was just a vacant lot. Since then, there’s been a fund raiser pretty much every two weeks for the mini golf. Over a period of two years the lot has been derocked, mown, fertilized, landscaped and beautified.

The entire village participated in creating the various hole decorations, some of which are made from gold painted bleach bottles, some from cut up tires.

And some from papier mache.

The Incredible Hulk that guards the first hole is made from newspaper, flour, water and glue, and then painted a shade of green that is reminiscent of Easter basket grass. This one hole marker alone is enough to keep the village busy all summer, which is also known as The Rainy Season.

Every rainy morning the poor Hulk is reduced to a sad pile of wet newspaper, and every second or third evening he’s back again. I suspect that the local folks just don’t want to give up on the artfully ripped trousers that he wears.

It was while passing this symbol of optimism that I caught myself singing along with the loudspeaker. (There’s a catchy tune going around that you can hear on pretty much any loudspeaker, anywhere. It’s full of lots of No-oh-oh-oh-uh-oh’s and Ay-yi-yi-yi-ai-ayes, and impossible not to sing along with) The gold toothed lady who was throwing a bucket of water out of her front door started singing with me. And then her husband, who was working under the hood of a car, joined in as well.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly the cafeteria scene from Fame, but it wouldn’t have happened on 16th and K, I can tell you that.

By the time I got around the corner, I was singing out loud and thinking how crazy it was. I was wearing some really hideous pedal pushers that the neighborhood is used to by now, along with the crocs that Lupi has gradually gnawed into a scallop across the instep. If I had seen me coming at myself in the States, I would have reached for change and called the cops.

But walking the streets in tattered seersucker pants and chewed up crocs and singing at the top of your lungs with two Mexican mongrels is just an icebreaker around here.

Mexico rocks.

11 Comments

11 Responses to “From Crazy Bad to Crazy Good”

David said on August 16th, 2008 at 1:23 am

OK, I showed you the Tour Eiffel and the Egyptian Obelisk, WHERE IS THE FRIGGIN’ GOLF COURSE?

(I’ve probably gone by it many times, but just thought it was someone’s yard ornaments.)

hugs,

david ramon corona McKenzie
Elliott said on August 16th, 2008 at 2:22 am

Ah, mi amigo David Ramon Corona! You either thought it was yard ornaments or a recycle pile. XO
heatherinparadise said on August 16th, 2008 at 4:41 am

Simply fucking gorgeous. I love you.
Elliott said on August 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am

Awwww, Heather stop it. But thank you from the President of the MAS (mutual admiration society)
nancyd said on August 17th, 2008 at 8:46 pm

Elliott, You always kill me. But this one even more than usual. Thank you!
Elliott said on August 17th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

No, thank you, Nancy! I’m glad I discovered this business of answering comments here…for some reason, I have huge problems commenting on Blogger, but if I could have commented on your amazing black dogs, I would have!
Michele in Playa said on August 18th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Ah…see know here is the difference between our respective adopted homes. We are positively overrun with the cutest, posh-est most fashion forward young people here. We do, of course, have a few nutters that you can spot from a kilometer away, generally sporting some jacked up thing they fashioned from bits of a cheap Frida Kahlo print sarong. They really stand out here as it seems everyone is just so damn pretty…damn it….and young…and perky. Aaaargh. My wardrobe has managed to remain unaffected by my change of locale. With the exception of the ubiquitous chunky shell necklaces, I continue looking like a preppy New England mom sort. *sigh*
Elliott said on August 18th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

I noticed that about you in those pictures from the amusement park!And by the way, if I carried it off the way you do, I’d be rocking it too. But I’ve got to tell you, If I don’t pay attention,I leave the house looking crazy here, there, or in the halls of Bellevue.XO!
stupphelan said on August 18th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

This post had it all, Elliott: your usual excellent prose, the perfect evocation of the Lakeside life, your self-deprecating humour, lots of personal history. AND you wear Crocs. You’re just about perfect in my book.
Elliott said on August 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Lynn, I wondered where you were! Thank you for the kind words. Perfect, eh?Buahahhahaha!
Countdown to Mexico » Blog Archive » It’s the First Latin American Blogger Awards! said on September 30th, 2008 at 12:57 am

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