#444 Free Holes

Much in life depends on expectation. After we’ve lived for a while we tend to order our world based on our past. We expect the present to conform to what we know already. So when I first encountered Mexico I had to interpret it based on what I knew already. I was cautious. I remember back in my junior high school Spanish class when I mistakenly assumed frijoles were some kind of bonus donut thing, free holes. Or the time someone told me that the word luge was pronounced loogie in Spanish. And that there was a Mexican luge team for the winter Olympics from Oaxaca. Oaxaca loogie. So when I was in Mexico I was always wondering and comparing. Cabo San Lucas has a Costco. Which on the face of it is pretty odd. I didn’t go but I’m not sure what I’d find there. I mean Cabo’s a place you can pick up ceramic mobiles for 5 bucks, or silver jewelry, whistles, and all manner of knickknacks on the street for pennies on the peso. What’s Costco gonna do? Offer you a discount on a shrink-wrapped three-pack of cheap trinkets? Tequila by the tub? And who benefits? There’s a double economy in Cabo—the tourist area where everything costs as much as the states and the area where the Mexican workers, who make the princely sum of 8 dollars a day, scratch out their frijoles and rice. I’m just guessing there aren’t as many big screen TVs as the Tumwater Costco. When we were driving out of town I saw a sign that said University of Tijuana. I was surprised. Tijuana is on the other end of the Baja peninsula. And the Baja peninsula is pretty long. That’s like expecting the University of San Diego to have a campus in Eureka. But I had to wonder, what’s the academic specialty of the University of Tijuana? Are they known for their seminal work in human donkey communications? Archeological interpretations of ancient tuck and roll upholstery? Somehow “University” doesn’t fit in my in my expectations of Tijuana as the quintessential border town. A week after I got back, I got the other end of the expectation thing. I went to the self-checkout line in Home Depot. I accidentally pressed Spanish instead of English when the opening screen came up. And the machine was so sensitive that I accidentally scanned my first item at the same time. I couldn’t get the machine to go back to English. So I went through the rest of the transaction in Spanish. The machine was rather loud in its Spanish prompt. Finally, I reached a point where the checker overseer had to help. I’d used a coupon and the machine was telling me in Spanish to wait for cashier assistance. I looked around with an enquiring look on my face and the cashier said in slow, loud and exaggerated English, Cou-pon? Cou-pon? I handed it to her and said Si. Who was I to shatter her world? She made me accidentally bilingual for a day. Funny thing though—the receipt was printed in English.
America ya gotta love it.