Paco had to go to campus today to work on a programming project with his classmates, leaving me with the day to do other things. After I realized that I hadn’t picked up a copy of an article I needed for class, I decided to get the reading photocopied. The research institute is located in downtown Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara. I hopped on the bus, irritated to see a kid sitting with his legs up on the seat next to him while others were standing up. Bad manners. At the next stop, a young man with a guitar got on and began to strum–nothing unusual around here. As he strummed, he talked about this song that he had composed, and he philosophized about why we needed to smile, and appreciate other people, and other things I wasn’t really paying attention to. Once he finished talking, he played a few more chords and opened his mouth to sing.
I don’t have enough musical knowledge to say exactly how off-key he was, but this young troubadour’s voice was so dissonant with the perfectly reasonable chords he was playing, that it was almost unlistenable. Obviously, I didn’t know what the tune of his original song was SUPPOSED to be, but I’m sure that whatever he was singing was not what he imagined in his head. It took all my energy not to crack up–after all that build up and philosophy, he was off tune! I looked around to see if anyone else had a pained look or sympathetic upward head movement to psychically influence his pitch. I seemed to be the only one on the verge of hilarity.
When he finished the first song, he thankfully returned to speaking to explain his next number. “We’re going to do a survey,” he said, “what is the thing that is least important to you? Well, if you can think of it and name it, then it is important to you, isn’t it? So this is a song about when we try to forget things.” He launched into another cringe-eliciting vocal display, and I got off the bus before I could hear his pitch for the few coins in our pocket. I imagined that this might be a good scene in the novel I hope to write someday.
After I got my copies made, I decided to get a much-needed cup of coffee. There were a group of high school students eating and making noise in the café, in that way that high school students do, maybe trying to get the most satisfaction out of unsupervised moments, or maybe because freedom is still so new and thrilling that it has to be enjoyed at high volume. The waiter took my order for an Americano (you can’t get brewed coffee in Mexican coffee shops, so an Americano is the next best option).
When he returned with the coffee, he asked me, “you’re not from here, are you?” I affirmed that I was not, and I heard myself say very defensively, “why?” “No reason,” he assured me. “Where you from?” he asked. “California,” I answered. “So you’re a tourist,” he said. “No,” I said, not smiling. “You live here?” he continued. I nodded, surprised at how unfriendly I was being. Having awkwardly but effectively ended the conversation, he retreated to the safety of the bar, and I focused on my unusually bitter Americano (symbolic?) and the book I was reading.
I felt a little bad as I scowled into my book, still wearing my sunglasses. Nothing the waiter had said or asked was all that out of the ordinary, and certainly not offensive. It’s not strange to ask people with accents where they are from. I wished that I’d been a little more friendly. But it also reminded me why it’s hard not to be in my country, where I wouldn’t be of any particular interest at any given coffee shop, where I don’t have to walk around waiting to be asked to explain myself. In the places I’ve lived in the United States, there is so much diversity that you’d have to be an alien to seem really different. There is much more diversity in Mexico than people realize, but it’s not a place where you hear many foreign accents. The only other accent I’ve heard here, besides my own, belongs to the man who sells Chinese food in the market, which he announces in Spanish with a Chinese accent. I grew up EXPECTING to hear accents from my friends’ parents, from nurses and doctors, from cashiers and hair stylists. The first time I heard an American accent coming from the speaker at a fast food drive through, I was 18, and I was shocked.
Anyway, I told the cashier to keep the change when I paid, and I went home.
