Slap happy!

Lately I have been reminiscing about the year that I spent in García, Nuevo León when I first came to Mexico. Since I am already on a roll I think I will just keep going until I get it out of my system. I miss that time and place very much. Yes, I have been back to visit but it just isn't the same. My friends at the parish house, Pardre Humberto and Padre Joel, have moved on to other assignments, my good friend Pépe Fernández, the fantastic guitar player is dead, and so are a lot of my other older friends. Some of the cute little girls of the village are already barefoot and pregnant and the cute little boys who grew up to make them that way are jerks. In certain matters life is really not that different in Mexico than it is anywhere else. One thing that I do not miss, however, are the zancudos (sahn-KOO-dohs) which is what people here call mosquitoes.

I think that García is the home of the worlds loudest mosquitoes and they are also the tiniest. To make up for their small size they like to fly into your ear and buzz around like an automobile theft alarm going off in your head. When you try to slap them you end up slapping yourself silly. One night when I really needed to get some sleep, I ran into the “Snoopy” of the mosquito world and he must have thought that I was the Red Baron. The little bugger was totally annoying and I was in a really bad mood. I would slap at him and slap at him and one of us was definitely driving the other one nuts. I tossed and I turned and I even put my pillow over my head but somehow he would find a way to burrow down and drill. Then I got desperate. I jumped out of bed determined to hunt that mosquito down but I couldn't find him anywhere so I climbed back in bed. No sooner had I turned off the light and gotten comfy under the covers and he would return again...zzzzzzzz right in my ear...slap, slap...zzzzzzzzzz...slap, slap...zzzzzz...over and over with no relief.

The buzzing and slapping went on and on and I was getting dizzier and madder with every slap. I jumped out of bed two or three times very fast and turned on the light but he was too smart for that and he would always disappear before I could see him. Finally after just about slapping myself into unconsciousness I quickly jumped up with my my flashlight and there he was and I swiped at him and get this...I caught him in my fist! Right then I decided to teach that little bastard a lesson so instead of immediately crushing him like a bug I brought my fist up to my lips and opened it just enough so that he could hear me and I shouted:

Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTT! ! ! !