Guess what kids, today is a day that ends in Y? Know what that means? You guessed it, time for another story about driving in Mexico. Or is it time for another story about police and crime in Mexico. Or is it time for another story about not going out after dark in Mexico. I can’t remember. So, I’ll just do all three.
The first thing you need to understand is that driving in Mexico is a little bit like driving in New Jersey. There are no left turn lanes. In general in order to turn left you have to go past where you are headed and make a u turn. In New Jersey it’s a minor annoyance and not a big deal. In Mexico its taking your life in your hands. The spaces in the road set aside for turning are not well lit, stop lights with green arrows. No, they are, tiny little, pull out across 3 lanes of traffic bearing down on you and hope that if you hit somebody they won’t decide to shoot you, u-turn lanes.
Our community is off a smaller side road, so you can only turn onto our road from one direction on the main street (which by the way is street number 1 from this post). Usually if we are coming from the other direction we just go around the block. That’s fine, usually it takes all of three minutes. Except that one night earlier this week the intersection to get onto that street was closed. Yes the whole intersection was shut down, not like one lane of traffic going through, or lots of traffic. The whole intersection was shut down.
This actually isn’t all that uncommon. Police Activity. I’m not sure what it actually means. Was there a crime committed there (there are some stores that got robbed from time to time on the corner there, but generally the police don’t seem to care)? Are they looking for somebody? Have they been paid off to stop traffic for some reason? The answer is lost to the mists of the drug war. All we know is that we get a text message from one of LRs coworkers to let us know that the entire intersection has been closed.
It turned out not to be a big deal, since we were already home that night. Lets be honest, what nights are we not already home watching tv-- its what we do. But, if we had been out (as some of our friends were) then it would have been impossible to get home. With that intersection closed, and there being no way to turn across traffic onto our block we would have been stranded outside at night in Mexico. Its not exactly like you can go kill an hour window shopping or something.
It’s a wonderful situation, get a text message saying, there is police activity near your community, go home as a precaution to be safe, only to discover that the police activity prevents you from going home. Yossarian would be quite proud.
Its yet another reason not to go outside. Even if you don’t get shot, mugged, kidnapped, conscripted into being a drug mule, run over by a crazy driver or bitten by a stray street dog, you might not be able to get home again due to “police activity.” See what I brave simply to amuse my adoring public.
This blog has been gang violence free for 50 days
Body Count: 0
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