Okay, so there have been lots of bits and pieces of this that have been mentioned, but I wanted to give the “official story” of Monday’s (Monday, 26 Nov) encounter with a youth and a shotgun, so I can maybe get this thing out of my head and get back to work. It’s good to be alive….
I woke up yesterday still distraught at the loss of my computer, my palm, and my mountain bike. It had only been 6 weeks since the prior robbery, and between all the kicking myself for (for what? for living in Uruguay? for having an alarm company, insurance? for hiding my stuff inside my house? for locking up my bike?)… for bad things happening, and the grieving of the loss of data, I woke up not feeling like doing much of anything.
I happen to be remodeling my garage/office and so I had to give some attention to that yesterday morning. I also went and got some copies made of a flyer. The flyer has a beautiful picture of my laptop on it and it says, ROBBED, in brazen letters across the top. I was determined for EVERYONE to see my flyer, and left the house to conquer evil and get my computer back. Now Montevideo is not all that big, and there are two or three pockets of crime in the city. So if you can just drop a few flyers in the store windows in those neighborhoods, you up your probability of someone’s little brother wanting reward money badly enough that they give you information… well, we all know how informants work, so I want bother you with trifles.
It happens that one of those neighborhoods is close where I go teach a computer class to sixth graders. So, I say to myself, I’ll just drop some flyers by there, and that will surely help me get my computer back. The main street that separates this neighborhood from a more economically privileged neighborhood is called Acosta y Lara, named after a guy who got shot during the time of the military dictatorship in Uruguay. It is literally one of those “other side of the tracks” experiences where $150,000 homes are on one side (heavily protected by walls, gates, glass, bars, dogs, expensive alarm systems) and on the other side there are tin shacks.
I drove down the street looking for a place to park that wouldn’t end my car up in a ditch, and passed two mom-and-pop stores and one center for community development. Finding a good place to park, and three good places to hang flyers, I hopped out of the car and walked 50 yards back to the first store. A scraggly looking teenager walked out of the store while I was walking in. His presence just confirmed what I already knew… “Rough neighborhood.”
A woman behind the counter about my age was more than happy to post my Reward Note. I remember thinking how much I liked the font at the top, and the way the pictures and text were aligned, and that I had been doing too much amateur graphic design work of late. I thanked her again, turned, and proceeded to walk out of the store, only to be greeted by the same scraggly teenager, who pulled out a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun from his backpack, and told me to give him my wallet, “Or I´ll kill you right here…”
I honestly have to tell you, I thought the whole thing was a joke. His “piece” looked like it would fall apart at any minute… vintage 1934, or some year similar. I laughed inside and glanced at the “ROBBED” flyers in my hand, thinking, “Hey, maybe this is the guy who stole my laptop yesterday.”
At the same time, I freaked out. It was like when a yellow jacket hones in on the yellow flowers on your Hawaiian shirt, and you start dancing to get away, but no matter where you turn, the thing is still on top of you. The thing was still on top of me. The human being, who I wanted to make into a “thing,” was on top of me. The divine image-bearer, caught up and bearing some of the worst elements of original sin and whatever evils had befallen him or befallen others at his hands, was on top of me.
Pardon my extensions here, and just consider it part of making this something that is containable in story, not something that defines my reality in its entirety (that’s what the therapists say is supposed to happen with debriefing).
I ducked back into the store, sure the specter of the whole situation would dematerialize in the presence of other human beings, but the firearm, young man connected securely behind it, entered the store and found me in the corner between the bargain brand soda and the empty meat container.
“Give me your money or I’ll kill you right here.” The only thing I could think of was Uruguayan bureaucracy, the three legal documents I would have to replace, and all the hassle of cancelling credit cards (my missing laptop for the moment took on less importance). I showed him the inside of the wallet, and told him I had no money, but he could have it anyway. Could he just let me get my ID card and my two drivers licenses out (stupid idea, I know… but at this point, it´s part of the story). He yelled even louder. I recognized I was getting off-script, and plucked out four or five plastic cards as I handed him the wallet. I showed him that they weren’t money, just little bits of plastic. I didn’t even look to see what they were.
He looked inside the wallet and then got really mad. “Where the @!@#$# is your money?” Now those who know me well, all the way back to the lunch cafeteria in elementary school, know the answer… “Matt never has cash.” That’s why they invented debit cards! For some reason, the guy who entered to rob the corner market, and decided to go for the gringo instead, and who wasn’t even born when I was bumming spare change from my friends in 7th grade, couldn’t believe that I didn’t have any money.
So, doing as one does to a foreigner when you feel they don’t understand you, he proceeded to speak louder and more impatiently. He wasn’t about to leave empty-handed.
My hands, quickly thinking how they could save the 200 pound human they are connected to, decided they would show him my pockets and give him the cell phone. General Santa Ana of Mexico said of all his rival officials, “A dog with a bone its mouth will neither bark nor bite.” My hands must have dug back into the memory of my Latin American history class in university and pulled out the bone of a cell phone to throw him.
Meanwhile, I just kept getting smaller and smaller in the corner by the meat counter, trying to reduce my body mass and shrink the target, hoping the yellow jacket would smell some other flower somewhere.
And so with an empty wallet, and the cheapest model of cell phone on the market, he somehow disappeared. I don’t remember, but I might have been peeking out from in between the eyelashes on my right eye, hoping that it would be all over. And it was.
The women who own the “store in the front room of their house” quickly ushered me to the other side of the partition, and started making all sorts of noises about calling 911 (yeah, we have that here too… they liked the TV show so much, they decided to co-opt the number for themselves). All the neighbors wisely stayed at bay. The woman began giving details to the police about what had just happened. I crouched down in the easy chair observing everything in that part of the house. The golden wired TV stand with the white plastic casters, an old black porcelain clock, a poster from a favorite soccer team, a deep red brick fire place, the bunk beds on the other side of the partition from the “store.”
“This is their life. Every single day. Every day. I get to go home. I have a hundred friends to call and they help change the situation. Every day.” And it’s not just Uruguay. It’s Orange Mound. It’s “South Side.”
I sat there thinking how scary and exciting this narrative sounds to white suburban dwellers, and how, “Dang, boy, that’s all that happened to you… you ain’t even entered the neighborhood to you take one to the chest…” that must sound for folks that live with it every day.
I called Toni and let her know I’d be late with the car (as usual), and that I didn’t, in the end, get shot. She was glad for the news.
So the police arrived. “What in the world were you doing over here?” “I was coming to try to spread the word and get my stuff back.” We both shared that “knowing look.” That, “yeah, that was a pretty stupid idea in retrospect, wasn’t it, aren’t we both glad I’m alive and that the nice police officer doesn’t have to go home and tell his wife the story about the foreign fatality that happened today at work” look. “No, but why are you HERE, in this country?” “Because I love Uruguay, and I love it no less after the last two days of my life, and I have an incurable addiction to it.”
“You’re crazy.”
Half an hour later I was leaving there. It was a weird drive home. I thought about my flyers, and how since I didn’t have a cell phone anymore, I guess I would have to make new ones. Then I thought that maybe someone who saw the cell phone number might not respond anyway, since it costs 10 cents a minute to call a cell number. I thought maybe there is one kid who would go in the store, who would know where my stuff is, and who would call, and find the number blocked, or worse, would end up talking to the kid who stole my wallet, and would tell him where he could go to find the computer.
I got home and decided on a hamburger and a bowl of ice-cream for lunch, decided to take the afternoon off, and popped in Lord of the Rings. I needed to see Frodo, and Gandalf, and the White City, and remember, that in spite of all the bad things, the worst things out there possible, there is something and Someone above and beyond. There is a just end to the evil we see every day… The global evil a million light years away from our hearts, the evil of the corners we cut in our daily living, the evil of the folks who cut us off in traffic, the evil of the one who aims the firearm… and even the evil of the one who pulls the trigger.
“My peace I give to you, not as the world gives. In the world you shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” –Jesus
