¿Quién los rayos está llorando? I run to the door to see who is crying. Before I get to the door I realize my mistake. But living at the intersection of San Pablo & Richmond, it's about the least consequential error I can make. I open it and see my favorite dog in the world, and the one I enjoy complaining about the most.
I'm on dog duty today. That means I have to take Angelo the esquincle chihuahua out on a walk. White with tan spots, he's a sweet Mexican canine cappuccino. Hace mucho que no te he visto, how have you been? I bend down to pet him. Then he does what he does-he quickly rolls over on his back, looks directly at me, and shoots up a seemingly inexhaustible spray of pee into the air.
¡Caray!
I let go of the leash & jump back.
He misses.
I win.
This time.
But his motto is "¡Hasta la victoria, siempre!" So I know they'll be a re-match.
Angelo races past me into the house. Like a shot, he finds the open can of Planters on table.
We met down on the fort of Rio Grande
Eat the salted peanuts out of can
"So it's like that. Okay,
Cisco Kid.
¡Vámonos!
So after this greeting, out we go. Like no one's goin' to be messin' with me when I'm out with this seven-inch brute (whose antepesados were originally bred by the Toltecas for purposes...ahem...other than defense), especially when his only defense may now be on empty (I pray). I love this canine Cantinflas even though the more time I spend with him the more I look like him...or is it vice versa? Chingue!.
Outside I see Sergio's bike is gone & I ask myself if he'll find work on Labor Day in the Home Depot's parking lot.
As we go along a couple of our remaining employed police officers are pulling someone over in the distance. I'm squinting trying to see what type of turban-like garment the driver has on.
Suddenly two adolescent black kids & a hispanic girl start to pass us from behind on the sidewalk. One of the boys is passing on the right side, as the girl & the other boy pass on the left side.
I see the girl smile as she playfully moves towards one of the guys. ¡Híjole! . I know what she's doing. She quickly bumps him on purpose, catches him off-guard, & he trips in front us. His half-full energy drink energetically flips through the air & lands on a black & white former police car. The kid tumbles by missing me, but almost makes Angelo roll over on his back. Angelo instead runs for the can as it rolls off the hood of the car. The poor guy tries to recover both his balance & dignity. He apologizes 3 times. The girl & the other guy are teasing him about being clumsy & supposedly terrified of a dog the size of a pupusa. I laugh also. I feel like an adolescent again.
I flash back to when I was a kid in helLa with my friends, & we would do the same nonsense.
Back in the day
Back in the day...growing up in LA...walking along Olympic & Crenshaw Blvds on the way home from JB Jr High. We always take our time strolling & go as slow as possible (with the exception of when we pass by LA High where we put our pedal to the metal to avoid roving gangs of older girls who yell taunts from across the street-the older guys just ignore us for some reason).
Every day we stretch out a half hour walk into an hour of goofing off.
We're a motley gang of awkard 13 year-old outsiders pretending to have conquered puberty:
Jeong, the short Korean comedian who mangles punchlines but never cares, & who has 5 or 6 James Brown songs that even we admit he renders nicely (if always at the wrong times).
Randy, the tall gangly black gay kid who is our un-proclaimed intellectual leader (& whose voice is like William Buckley's),
Bobby, the recalcitrant polish immigrant with the heaviest accent in school & who claims victory in legions of fistfights that no one else ever sees or hears of,
Dennis, the bouncy Jewish kid (who wouldn't find out until the next year that he was Jewish) whose belt never holds up his pants long enough to pass 3 cracks in the sidewalk, &
Miguel, the soft-spoken, thin as a rake, & vaguely Mexican kid who just moved from New Mexico & who has a beautiful "older" sister that most of us are secretly in love with.
We're too dumb to know how different we are from each other, or notice that our parents aren't friends, or that in other parts of the country (or of the city for that matter) we'd be at each other's throats. We're too ignorant to know that more things divide us than unite us. We're too busy being friends to be saware of why we should not be.
The only thing we care about is taking as long as humanly possible to get home. Well, that & one other thing (No, not THAT. THAT was next year).
We're walking along teasing each other for how we're dressed today, or how we're walking too slow, or too fast, or lying about our parents. Suddenly all hell breaks loose. We run like crazy, stumbling over each other, elbows flying. Jeong shoves Randy, who bumps into Dennis, who falls in front Bobby, who then trips as Miguel soars over him to the lucky destination. Miguel is the winner today, & clutches in his bony hand the quarter retrieved from the gutter.
We now waste 20 minutes agruing about how each of us in turn could've grabbed it if so & so hadn't cheated & gotten in the way. With too-big smiles, we accuse each other of forming non-existent alliances that prevented claiming the coin.
Hell, this is a momentous event wherein we reveal our true selves as heroes of epic proportions. It is no less momentous for being a ritual that we repeat almost every day walking home.
We find coin most days. At least a penny (pues, ok sometimes just slugs). For any day we'd don't find any change, we debate the relative merits of the yesterday's triumph or defeat. A scraped knee is proposed as the evidence of undeniable, irrefutable & eternal courage, only to be immediately shot down by others as a sign of ineptitude.
Back to the post-Reagan present
I'm snapped out of my trip down memory lane by yet another unrepaired crack in the sidewalk. I'm sent sprawling in emulation of the kid now 20 feet ahead. Angelo is startled & this time he does roll over on his back to assume the position.
he aims,
I cover my face with my hands,
he fires,
but the Cisco Kid misses yet again.
"What, is that all you got? "Piňche perrito maldito, pero tequiero un chingo (you doggone little dog, I luvs ya' mucho)."
Now Angelo's really on empty, but no se importa. He still insists on stopping at every piňche bush, rock, broken bottle, & piece of trash we come across. And we come across a lot.
I'm looking for change now. I want to be a kid again. I might be slower now, but I've still got an eagle eye.
Angelo & I walk for another 40 minutes or so.
We pass some dogs that terrify Angelo.
We pass some cats that terrify Angelo.
He even barks nervously at a fly.
I see (& he smells) receipts from stores, fast food bags, nuts, bolts, & a few broken pens. Puras chingaderas (Republican job creation plans or other useless things).
Not a quarter.
Not a dime.
Not a nickel.
Not even a piňche penny.
County workers furloughed & then laid-off. Retail businesses wind down & then close down. Austerity is being de-regulated & all the loose change has disappeared off the streets.
Not even a piňche penny waiting to be found.
"¡Cisco, vámonos ala casa!"