This story is too strange to not mention, at least in passing.
The house we live in currently is two doors down from the house we’re building, so it’s very convenient to monitor the progress of the construction. As we found out on Sunday evening, though, there are also disadvantages to being that close.
Around 8:30 P.M., there was a knock on our door. I set down my margarita to see who was there, and when I opened the door, before me stood one of the guys working on our house. I didn’t actually know his name, because he had just been hired last week, along with two other new guys. He was a rather big guy, a bit shorter than me, but a lot stronger-looking. He smelled like booze and was barefoot in the drizzling rain. So, I said hello, and asked what was going on. He asked me if he could call the contractor. I said sure, no problem, and I went to get the phone from the other room. When I came back, he was sitting on the porch step with his back turned to me, and he was sobbing.
Uh….awkward….
I said, “Here’s the phone.” (This whole conversation was obviously in Spanish, so these aren’t necessarily exact quotes from either of us). The guy said that I should call the contractor, so I dialed the number and handed him the phone, but he didn’t want to take it. I hung up. He said I should sit down and talk to him because he was lonely. “Well, sure,” I said, and sat down, hoping this wouldn’t be one of those repetitive, three-hour Drunk Guy Sermons.
He told me many, many times that he was sad, and that the reason he was sad was because the other workers, who were staying in the same house with him in the back of our new lot, had tied him up. I asked what he meant by “tied him up,” and he said that he gotten too drunk and violent, so they tied his hands and feet, took his car keys and shoes, and put him in his car to sleep it off. Evidently, he’d managed to untie himself and had stumbled his way to our house because he didn’t know where else to go.
He kept grabbing my ankles and wrists to demonstrate how they tied him up, and lightly hitting my chest to demonstrate how much his coworkers’ actions “hurt his heart.” It was the weirdest conversation that I’ve had on that particular porch…so far, at least.
And all of this was going on during Smallville! Not even one of the episodes from season 1 and 2 that they show during weekdays; no, this was a Sunday episode from the “new” season, and it was already super confusing, not only because it was in badly-dubbed Spanish (“Was Lana in that car when it blew up?? And what the hell is happening with Chole and Luisa—did they switch lives?? WTF?!?”)
In any case, Angela called the contractor, and he said he’d head right up from Palmares. So after sitting and talking with me for about 10 minutes, this drunk guy who kept calling me Max--evidently he once knew an American named Max—decided that he was going to walk home to San Ramón, probably to avoid the contractor who would pass by on the other road in a matter of minutes. Obviously, that was just sweet, stupid drunk talk, but I also didn’t doubt that he’d try to actually walk downhill 15 kilometers in the rain…barefoot. So, I called in to Angela and asked her to bring my extra sandals, and I stalled the guy until a Smallville commercial break came along and Angela brought the sandals. He put them on, and despite our attempts to convince him to wait, that was the last we saw of him.
When the contractor arrived, he talked with the remaining guys in the house where the workers are staying, and he sorted things out a bit. Apparently, the guy had been drunk, and he had tried to fight the guy who runs the Berlín pulpería, which is kind of like a little drug store or general store, only much less convenient and with fewer items. It appears that our guy wanted to fight the pulpería owner because the guy wouldn’t let him buy alcohol on credit…and also because the pulpería doesn’t actually sell alcohol.* (*As an aside, the pulpería in question here is NOT the one run by my sister-in-law’s husband’s brother-in-law, but rather the pulpería run by the son of the guy who rides around Berlín on his fucking horse and shuts off the water every night…in other words, the drunk guy actually should have hit the pulpería owner so hard that his father would feel it, too. As an aside to an aside, every time I play “Six Degrees of Separation: Berlín Edition,” basically everyone around here turns out to be my “sister-in-law’s husband’s brother-in-law” or something similarly obscure. End aside.)
So, the other guys turned vigilante on our drunk buddy’s ass, and they tied him up and took his car keys, all of which was probably a good idea, all things told. The contractor arrived and told the new guys that this type of shit hadn’t happened in the six weeks before they arrived, and that he expected them to be gone by the time he arrived the next morning.
And in a fictional little town in Kansas, some alien thing took some of Clark Kent’s DNA, and the episode will be continued next week, when we’ll find out if Lana Lang really died, if Chole gave her live to save Luisa’s, and when we’ll hopefully not be interrupted by any more drunk shenanigans.
Unless it’s the type of shenanigans where people return your pair of backup sandals. Shit.
365: Picture a Day Project
365 Leftovers
All My Pictures
Sitzbook
As I mentioned in the comment section of a previous posting, the Blue Grey Tanager that was making his nest in the bars of our shower is gone (What, you don't read the comments religiously?? Shame on you!). He left after our nephew checked the nest to see if there were eggs, and he reported that there were two. We asked him if he'd touched the nest, and he said "No," which is Spanish for, "Definitely." So, the Pervert Bird is gone. In its place we have a new nest in our garage, made by Costa Rica's official National Bird, the Yigüirro. The only thing stranger than the name is the way it's pronounced. In any case, this one seems to be in for the long haul, and the nest is fortunately out of reach of any kids. Also, Angela is now convinced of the merits of letting the bird keep its nest there. She also threw out the first two nests that the Yigüirro made because it kept shitting on our car, but it seems to have learned its lesson, and has subsequently stopped. Now it gets to keep its house, and we get new national birds.
