Sunday, 23 July 2006 - 19:06

Yesterday was a slow day. It started with the cellphone alarm going off and my brother in law's repeated jabs at it to turn it off, then all of a sudden realizing he was about to be an hour and a half late for work. He finally took off like a bolt out the door and went to work. I had a splitting headache and no pain medicine so I laid in bed until about 16:00, when my wife and sister in law decide they want to go to the otro lado, so we piled in the van with sis in law's kids and headed to the international bridge. We sat in line, and I called my dad while we were waiting to cross. He asked where we were, and I told him my butt was technically in Mexico, but my feet and the van motor were in Texas. Borders are a manmade piece of crap if you ask me.

We finally got to the stop sign where they make you wait until the person in front of you gets the 3rd degree interrogation, and then you go ahead and get your turn in the meat grinder. Well, the light turned green, but out of nowhere this chipper looking US Customs turd comes bounding out in what looks like a postal workers' summer outfit. He then began to put on this "My penis is bigger than yours" air. I swear to God before he took up residence in his guardshack he cracked his neck and fingers. Then he put an authoratative hand in the air for me not to proceed. Ok, fine. I waited. Then the light turned green, and I went ahead. Here he came out of his little toll booth monkey enclosure throwing me the "My penis is much, much bigger than yours" gesture and I sat there frozen. After about three minutes I FINALLY get to stop. I did, and all of a sudden I saw a camera flash go off. WTF? They're taking pictures of car tags now?? I pulled up to him, he opened every crevice in the van, asked ME for my papers (and me with a rather pronounced southern Mississippi accent. Yeah, I'm a credible threat, pal), and finally let us through after a bunch of asinine questioning. Over the next two hours, I finally find a way to somehow relax my sphincter muscles from the silent fear I was carrying that somehow my family would be separated by a fence with razor spikes on it. The border protection agency's name should actually be US Customs and Intimidation Disservice....

We end up at *gasp* Walmart, and I get out of my van slightly excited to be on home soil again. The roads are striped, the streets are (relatively) smooth and the traffic lights are actually hung over YOUR lane so you can tell where to go. We went in, when all of a sudden the stomach cramps hit me. I took off sprinting towards the mens' room when I suddently remembered the event that ruined the trip last year. I had sent my mother a text message in this very mens' room and left my phone behind, where it instantly found a new owner. I was very careful this time, and left with my phone actually in my posession. We bought our crap, paid for it, and dove back across the border 4 hours later, making it through customs with a green light and over $1,300 worth of merchandise in our posession.

We got home, ate some dinner, and finally my brother in law got off from work. He came up and told me his girlfriend's brother in law or some other nondescript distant relation had died. So after grabbing a couple of tallboy Tecate Lights at Oxxo, we headed through saturday night Matamoros traffic to the funeral home. When we got there I realized this wasn't just any person who had kicked the bucket. There were RayBans and cowboy hats everywhere. There were Hummers and Escalades and Navigators. But more importantly, there was the perrenial favorite among the Mexican elite: The tricked out black Chevrolet Suburban. I got kind of nervous when a group of men started staring over at my minivan. Picture this:

I was sitting there, in flipflops, drinking beer at 12:40 at night in a funeral home parking lot in Mexico, when my brother in law advises me with a serious look not to get out of the van or unlock the doors. I looked up from my beer and said "Narcos?” To which he nodded his head quickly as he got out of the van and disappeared into the night. I sat there and did what any sane person would do. I chugged that 24oz of nerve medication completely dry and began to play a game on my cellphone to act like I wasn’t disturbed at the sudden flashes of ill-begotten luxury, or the sunshades in the middle of the night, or the stench of marijuana in the air.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally came back to the van and we left immediately. I asked to stop at Oxxo again, where I purchased another 24oz can, this time of regular Tecate. I love how beer down here is so much stronger than the crap over across the border. It felt like I had been kicked in the forehead by a mule on crack.

We got home, flipped the A/C unit back on, and went to bed watching Smallville.