A Not So Warm Welcome
It appears Mexico is not particularly happy to have me back. And I don’t mean the people – the land itself has turned against me.
It started with some basic, I’m hungry, abdominal pain. Post lunch it had increased to something more than your typical stomachache. We were briskly walking home with the dual purpose of raiding the medicine cabinet and beating the rain when, right in front of that beautiful aqueduct I love so much, something grabbed my left ear and yanked me backwards. Pain assaulted my senses. English and Spanish curses exploded from my mouth. Despite its tight grip, I was able to turn my head slightly to identify the culprit: a thin branch hooked on my earlobe. I stumbled back a few paces, giving in to the will of this tree-beast. Frantically detaching the branch from my head I found it was covered in extremely sharp hooks which were now dangling at a perfect human-catching height.
Marisol and I exchanged words as we rushed to my apartment with my now bleeding ear. Based on my velocity pre-attachment, the sharpness of the hook, and the force with which I was jerked backwards, I was sure my ear was now hanging in two ragged pieces. A quick look from Marisol surely would have answered this question but apparently I wasn’t in a sharing mood. Upon looking in the mirror back home I was relieved: my ear was gashed in the front and pierced through clear to the other side, but not split in two. Who the hell plants an ear-shredding conifer in such a public...oh, never mind.
Initial fears aside, nothing more than gauze and antiseptic were required to clean me up. More troubling however, was the realization that throughout this lengthy ordeal – it felt at least 20 minutes – my attention never left the now awful pain in my abdomen...
(Continued here)
It started with some basic, I’m hungry, abdominal pain. Post lunch it had increased to something more than your typical stomachache. We were briskly walking home with the dual purpose of raiding the medicine cabinet and beating the rain when, right in front of that beautiful aqueduct I love so much, something grabbed my left ear and yanked me backwards. Pain assaulted my senses. English and Spanish curses exploded from my mouth. Despite its tight grip, I was able to turn my head slightly to identify the culprit: a thin branch hooked on my earlobe. I stumbled back a few paces, giving in to the will of this tree-beast. Frantically detaching the branch from my head I found it was covered in extremely sharp hooks which were now dangling at a perfect human-catching height.
Marisol and I exchanged words as we rushed to my apartment with my now bleeding ear. Based on my velocity pre-attachment, the sharpness of the hook, and the force with which I was jerked backwards, I was sure my ear was now hanging in two ragged pieces. A quick look from Marisol surely would have answered this question but apparently I wasn’t in a sharing mood. Upon looking in the mirror back home I was relieved: my ear was gashed in the front and pierced through clear to the other side, but not split in two. Who the hell plants an ear-shredding conifer in such a public...oh, never mind.
Initial fears aside, nothing more than gauze and antiseptic were required to clean me up. More troubling however, was the realization that throughout this lengthy ordeal – it felt at least 20 minutes – my attention never left the now awful pain in my abdomen...
(Continued here)
