But Grandma...what big teeth you have...

I can only remember having been punched one time in my life prior to last week. Elizabeth’s father had a most unfortunate fall which left him with a broken arm and a broken leg. More unfortunately he was here at the school with Elizabeth when it happened, thirty six hours away from his home in Bucaramunga. And most unfortunately he has Alzheimer’s disease which leaves him very disoriented and produces very abnormal behavior when he is under stress. Two days in the hospital and under the influence of strong pain killers and anti-psychotic tranquilizers was enough to put him completely out of his mind.
It is amazing the personality traits that come out of a person when they are completely out of their mind. One of my friends tells the story of his grandmother who was always very generous all of her life. When she came down with Alzheimer’s disease she would call him to her side and tell him to fetch her purse because she had thousands, maybe even millions of dollars that she wanted to give him. Well it just so happens that Senor Secundino was always a very independent person, hating to be tied down or wait for anybody. Definitely never had people waiting on him. During those two nights in the hospital, Elizabeth and I had to fight for our lives to keep him down in the hospital bed when the tranquilizers would wear off. Arms and legs flailing, he kept us hopping trying to keep him down and avoid getting walloped at the same time. If you were too close to his arm and didn’t have a good grip on it, he would ball up his fist and swing at you for all he was worth. If you did have a good grip on the arm, he would dig in with his fingernails and wait for you to get distracted by the ever increasing pain of his claws to pull your hand up to his few jaggedy teeth that he has left and bite you. After two days we were able to move him to a church members house in Barquisimeto. Elizabeth was completely exhausted, so I sent her home to rest and stayed at the house, together with my room-mate Nubia.
That was his first night after the accident without pain killers or tranquilizers. If he had been bad the first two nights, he was a terror with Nubia and I. Adding kicking and swearing to punching and biting, I considered myself to be the lucky one since I couldn’t understand most of the swearing…although from some of the gasps and expressions on Nubia’s face I could come pretty close to imagining what he might be saying. Since we couldn’t get him to give up his dentures that night, it was even more scary to seeing a pair of fully equip dentures coming straight at you.
Unfortunately Elizabeth says that he never did like to keep his clothes on so that was another source of contention. He fought us for all it was worth until one by one each item of clothing came off, last to come off being the hospital issued diaper. The next thing he wanted to go was the sheet. Since he was completely devoid of anything underneath, Nubia and I stuck to our guns on that one and fought him all night over the issue of the sheet. Eventually we had to tie all four corners of the sheet to the bed. Of course he wasn’t sleepy in the slightest, while the two of us were about ready to fall asleep standing up. During the whole night I packed in a total of four hours of sleep while Nubia only got to sleep for two.
Note to self:
Never work in a nursing home…

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The Art of Kissing

I never cease to be amazed and amused by my friends the Latinos. They are a very ‘aliving’ culture, as Elizabeth might say. Warm and fuzzy, loud and vivacious, always late but totally tranquila, distinct and cheveri…totally cool. One of the distinctly Hispanic customs is kissing. Before coming here I was one of those sheltered Americans who had never kissed anyone outside of the immediate family, unless of course they were under the age of say three or so. All that changed as soon as I set foot on Venezuelan soil. But there is an art to it. Not just any old thing will do. It’s kind of like learning how to eat with your hands when you go to India.
The general hello kiss is a light cheek to cheek kind of procedure done right after or while in the process of greeting the acquaintance, friend, stranger, enemy, boyfriend, girlfriend, family member etc. with one of the three of so dozen ways that the Spaniards have of saying the English equivalent of hey, howdy, what’s shakn’. I still haven’t learned the significance of all the greetings yet after four months. But if the question starts with ‘como…’ don’t bother giving a quizzical look and asking what it means. Just go right ahead and say good.
Note that the general hello kiss is strictly business. No lingering or monkeying around. Keep the lips dry, no slobbering on the other person or you get excommunicated from the club.
There are other ways of doing it for sure though. The above procedure is in general more for friends and acquaintances. The strangers and enemies fall into another category altogether from the ‘general’ hello kiss. We might call this the ‘illusive’ hello kiss. Or maybe the “barely there’ hello kiss. This one takes even more timing and accuracy than the ‘general’ hello kiss. For one thing you have to be quick on your toes to catch exactly the right timing. These kisses can really sneak up on you some times. When you see someone from this category approaching you, first of all brace yourself with a good baseball stance so as to have perfect control over your balance. The last thing you want to do is loose your balance on one of these kisses and end up toppling head over teakettle backwards in your attempt to execute the ‘illusive’ kiss. Even worse would be to loose your balance on the forward motion and go diving head first into a big, slobbery hello.
Once you’ve got the stance perfected, toes dug in a little for added balance, start moving in towards the cheek of the other person, all the time keeping an eye on the rate of approach of the other individual. This is where very precise timing comes into play. When you are very, very close to the other person…way into the personal space of an average American individual, you make a kind of swooping effect never actually touching the cheek of the other person while quickly reversing your direction of movement. At just the precise moment you pucker up your lips and making a loud smacking noise with as much drama as possible. This usually satisfies the best of them, especially if done with lots of smiling.
Now there is another kind of general hello kiss but it leaves the PG realm and enters the PG-13 category. As I am not sure of the age and experience of my blog viewers I will have to leave off describing this one.

Now you will understand better if I kiss you when I get back to the United States…