I came to the City of Broken Hearts with my Canadian spirit, always trusting, always wanting to help people and welcome them into my home. I've had a few unfortunate situations happen to me because of it. My friends say that here you cannot trust anyone, there are a lot of drugs, con artists and crazy people that will tell you anything to try to get into your house and then they rob you blind. There is a saying that is famous here among locals that this place is "un manicomio con vista del mar" which translates into "a loony bin with an ocean view".
I once saw a woman fall onto the pavement outside my apt., she didn't get up. I went down to see if she was okay, we ended up talking for awhile; she was heartbroken, had lost everything, I identified with her, held her, cried with her, was almost ready to invite her into my house to have a coffee. After one hour of talking and consoling her, she snatched my phone right from under my nose and took off running. My friends had warned me never to help anyone, but my thought is, when you see a woman completely unconcious in the street, how can you just ignore that? Wouldn't your heartstrings be pulled? I would feel much worse walking by and not doing anything to help. So, how do you get someone out of their mexicoma? My friends say the best thing you can do for someone is give them a kick to get them out of their mexicoma ~ how terrible are my friends?
I once saw a woman fall onto the pavement outside my apt., she didn't get up. I went down to see if she was okay, we ended up talking for awhile; she was heartbroken, had lost everything, I identified with her, held her, cried with her, was almost ready to invite her into my house to have a coffee. After one hour of talking and consoling her, she snatched my phone right from under my nose and took off running. My friends had warned me never to help anyone, but my thought is, when you see a woman completely unconcious in the street, how can you just ignore that? Wouldn't your heartstrings be pulled? I would feel much worse walking by and not doing anything to help. So, how do you get someone out of their mexicoma? My friends say the best thing you can do for someone is give them a kick to get them out of their mexicoma ~ how terrible are my friends?
Destiny put another test to me, I was walking along the beach one day when I saw a young guy rolling around in the shores of the ocean. Thinking he was just having a good time playing in the sand, I pretty much stepped right over him (very Seinfeld-like)! A nice older man came by and pulled him out of the water. It turned out that he was in a complete drunken state. Thank goodness there are still angels out there who care!
I have witnessed random crazy people who invent a story that their daughter is being held by police in her car the next block over and that they need to borrow a small amount of cash, just 200 pesos, to pay the police officer to let her go. There are a lot of street hustlers here who live off conning the foreigners. After awhile you become immune to all the B.S. stories and start to lose your empathy.
No comments:
Post a Comment