The gringa had lived in the Colonia San Rafael neighborhood of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for over thirteen years, gringa being the local word for an American woman living in Mexico. The old Mexican man with a limp reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's "Tramp" had lived in the neighborhood too, probably his entire life. The two passed each other many times walking down the hill, and every time the old man saw the woman, he said to her in English that one word that he apparently knew: "mo-nay." Time after time, the same word, "mo-nay." She grew annoyed with him, thinking, "Is that how he sees me? As only a source of money?" It isn't that she never gave to people in need -- she did, often generously, whatever she could. It's just that his one word was so constant and such a habit that it really got on her nerves. Not wanting to encourage him, she either ignored him or said, "No no tengo nada ahorita." “I don't have anything right now.” And walked on quickly. This went on literally for years. At times it almost seemed like a joke between them, him saying "Mo-nay" and she saying, "Nope, nada." And then one blinding hot day, the sunlight bouncing off of everything so much that your eyes hurt, he said something different. "Mo-nay. Hun-gray." She stopped and looked at him, as if for the first time. It had never occurred to her that perhaps he actually was hungry. She felt ashamed, and she took him over to the nearest tienda and asked him what he wanted to buy. His needs were simple: a bolillo--a small loaf of white bread--and a Coke. She bought them and gave him twenty pesos for a refresco later. And she asked his name. "Rubén," he said. "Mucho gusto, señor Rubén. Nice to meet you. Soy Frances," said she. After that, their relationship was different. He no longer was some needy old man, he was Rubén. Sometimes when he saw her, he still said, "Mo-nay" but it was different now that she knew his name and so if she had a few pesos with her, she gave them to him with a smile. And often, before leaving the house, she remembered to think of him and would grab a couple of coins in case she saw him. Sometimes, when he saw her, he didn't ask for money, but asked, in a neighborly way, "A dónde vas? Where are you going?" Or, "¿Acabas de volver del Centro? Did you just get back from town?" And she would talk to him for a few minutes. One day he was walking down the hill with his customary limp that spoke of hip problems, and she said, "¿Adónde va, señor Rubén?" "Where are you going?" And he said, "Estoy caminando para hacer ejercicio y conocer a mis amigos.” “I'm walking for exercise and to meet my friends." And she thought, "Wow, he knows he needs to move his body and he needs to socialize." She thought about this unexpected friendship that they had, and what a gift it was that his presence in her life had helped her shift her perspective from seeing him as someone who was needy to someone who was her neighbor, living life in his way, making the best of his circumstances, just as she was. She realized that he had caused her to confront her own unconscious bias. This was a big step, and she wanted to memorialize it by having a selfie with him. One day he was walking up the hill at the same time she was. "Would it be okay to take a photo with you, señor Rubén?" she asked him in Spanish. He said yes right away. Halfway up the hill, they stopped and looked at the camera. She was wearing her pandemic mask; he was maskless and wearing his battered hat. She stood a little back from him to try to keep "safe social distance." The birds were singing in the tree behind them and she felt happy for this moment. It felt to her like an achievement. There's still a long way to go; no doubt there are many more unconscious biases in my mind and heart. But I, the gringa in question, will always remember Rubén and the gift he brought me. The cost of a few bolillos and some Cokes is a very small price to pay.

Peace of mind… is easy to find? Not, but apparently is easily underrated, like Lana del Rey. How about true happiness? For a guy that has it all and a brain without the ability to focus, something always seems to be missing. Have you ever felt truly at peace with no worries in your head and the feeling that you could die right then and there and everything would be alright? Well, of course you didn't, that's why you killed yourself. “Jack, are you talking to C.R. again?”, said my friend P as she passed the joint. “What if she's really listening?”, I said while holding my breath full of brown, before slowly letting the smoke out from left to right, left to right. P was my best friend during high school and the one I would sneak to the roof with during Civics. “I don't think she WANTS to listen, otherwise she would still be here wearing necklaces instead of a noose…”, she said while extending her hand. “Shut up and smoke”, I said as I handed her what would be roughly translated to English as “little cow” (vaquita in Spanish… or was it bachita?), the smallest smokable divisor of the joint, that is, except “1”, the filter, duh. The truth is we both missed C.R. and we both lit our cigarettes. “Are you ready”, asked P. I smiled and said “obvs bitch, I'm the one who showed you.” I never know if you should capitalize the first word after the quotation marks if you wrote something outside the quote before, like it's the beginning of the sentence, but the spoken sentence and capital letters are meant for written language not oral. We each held the cigs up to the sun, vertically with the lit end on top, so that the white engulfed it from every angle. Synchronizingly, we flipped it upside down, lowered it to our bare legs, looked at each other and, without shifting our gaze, gently put them out, each on our left calf. Yeah we do that sometimes. It's not like we're depressed and want to kill ourselves like C.R. did. She was actually the first person I knew to kill herself. We just liked to do it because I discovered that sometimes, just sometimes, there is too much going on inside your mind that you feel disconnected to reality and find yourself in desperate need of a tether, something to remind you to feel. My excuse? I have ADHD since for as long as I can remember. I'm easily distracted and never get tired, bodywise and mindwise. It's like someone long ago started a motorboat engine in my mind, caught some weird timeless momentum and became a uniformly accelerated rectilinear object or whatever. It doesn't even stop while I'm dreaming, I suffer from extremely vivid and sometimes lucid dreams. I tend to confuse dreams with memories, they are so strong I sometimes believe they happened and I get wildly disoriented. P's excuse? Things at home have been wild for her. Her parents are going through a nasty divorce and her sister is having an affair with our teacher. So yeah, sometimes we like to feel alive by putting out our cigs on our legs. Arms would work too, but they are so public. The bell rang with that characteristically nasty loud pitch. Why does every school on Earth needs an annoying bell to signal the beginning and end of classes? Why not use a pleasurable sound? Has anyone thought school experiences might improve if someone changed that Godforsaken sound? P and I lowered our pants to cover the marks, threw the cigarettes over to the parking lot and headed to Math. We were completely stoned so I decided to take a mini nap during class, to which the teacher replied: “Jack, why are you not participating this time? You always get extra points” “I'm not feeling well”. I think Mr. M actually likes me. He is always amazed at how Math just flows through me, even though I almost never pay attention to him. He is also certain I give my friends the answers to his tests during the tests, but he has never discovered how. It's actually quite simple: I grab extra pages for “operational purposes”, solve the exam quite fast and on those pages designated for detailing my operations I solve the exam all over again in a slightly different way than mine. Then, I drop those pages at the same time as one of my friends drops theirs and he or she just picks them all up and voilà. I realized I found an unspoken rule of teaching: if a student is doing really well in a class, the teacher will grant him or her more privileges than other students. I actually don't like Mr. M so I enjoy torturing him like this. I think he is a self-centered misogynistic prick who gets off by showing off his so-called rapid mental calculation and by fucking P's sister. Going to school in Mexico City can be one of the best unintentional social experiments.