Mexico

While the following story is true, the names, dates, and circumstances have been changed to protect the guilty.

A coworker and I were sitting in the airport preparing to fly to Guadalajara, Mexico to attend a Corporate Safety Conference.  As we sat there waiting for our flight to be called, he grabbed a newspaper out of his carry-on bag and began to thumb through it.  I could see from where I was sitting that this was no ordinary newspaper.  It was one of those countrified, home-grown, backwoods, banjo music, rusty farm equipment type of local classified paper that advertises thousands of odds and ends for sale or swap, from Anti-Bo-Weevil Spray to Zebra Print Overalls.  I was immediately intrigued.

As you may know from reading my previous blogs, I am rather fascinated by - the oddity that is - the fainting goat. 

This fascination began years ago while I was in Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500.  As we retired at the hotel after a day at the races, we turned on the TV and started watching America’s Funniest Videos.  After a montage of being-hit-in-the-groin clips, a seemingly mundane video came on of a farmer feeding his goats.  Suddenly, and for no reason, right in the middle of the feeding, the man let out a loud yell.  All five goats’ legs locked stiff, their entire body became rigid, they fell over on their side like an inanimate statue, with legs sticking straight out, completely fainted, and dead to the world.  It was like someone had set them up like pins and bowled them over.  Then, just as suddenly as they fainted, they popped back up a few seconds later.  No harm, no foul. 

Now, it may have been the sunburn, the race exhaust fumes, severe dehydration, heat stroke, forgetting my medication, too many nachos, or just how tired I was, but at that moment, that was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my entire life.  I laughed so hard, NEHI orange drink came spewing out of my nose and it burned so badly that tears ran down my cheeks. And I didn’t stop laughing for three days straight. 

From that moment until now, every goat I see along my driving path or anywhere else, I will yell, scream, blow the horn, or make whatever loud noise I can to try to make the goat faint.  I’ve even tried it on cows and other animals. My wife is so embarrassed by this that she refuses to ride with me if I continue this bizarre behavior.  She also thinks I need a straight jacket and a membership to the local mental institution.  So far, the goats have won. Not one fainter in all of my eight hundred tries.  And my wife doesn’t ride with me anymore.

Well, back in the airport, my curiosity is killing me.  I asked my coworker, Skip, “Hey, are there any fainting goats in that paper for sale?”  Skip mumbled something under his breath about why does he always have to travel with the idiot, and flipped through the classifieds until he came upon the ‘Exotic Farm Animals” section.  I was surprised when he paused, smirked, looked up and said “Well, would you look at that. Here they are”.  Right there in black and white, between the Emus and the Horned Frogs, were the fainting goats for sale.  In the very first ad he read to me, a fainting goat was offered at the amazing low price of only $165, AND a bonus set of Ginsu knives would be included at no extra charge if you ordered in the next 30 minutes. 
Wait. What?  That is a steal!  Do you realize just how much entertainment you can get out of a $165 fainting goat???  I figured they would cost at least a few thousand dollars.  Heck, one NASCAR ticket for one race can cost you more than that.  The seller must not realize what a gold mine he has there. 

Now, hear me out…Let’s say, for instance, that the average lifespan of a fainting goat is about ten years…that averages out to only about four cents a day!  Then, if you get all red-necked-entrepreneurial, and charge your friends five dollars a faint, you can make some ludicrous farm animal money! Get yourself ten fainting goats on your farm, set up some white painted, half-tires in the ground that form 10 individual lines, and at $5 a faint, you could be a millionaire in a week.  I'm not lying.  Put it to a calculator.

So, I’m ready to buy me a fainting goat. I already have my checkbook out and my cell phone in hand and I’m asking Skip for the phone number of the seller.  And hurry because I can't miss out on those knives. 

But, wait, slow it down, hang on a minute.  My parents always said before you make any major purchases, you have to ask yourself the serious questions that must be answered in order to make a rational, informed, and educational decision.   

Such as –

How many ‘faints’ does the average fainting goat have in him? 

Will he faint 27 times then the warranty expires and he doesn’t faint anymore?  

Does he faint 200 times then he dies? 

Are there ‘dud’ faints where he stays upright and only farts and quivers a little? 

If so, will I have to refund anyone’s money?  

Can I breed him with another animal and create a new species of fainters? Maybe a fainting chicken? 

Will my goat be as Brian Fantana described his cologne in Anchorman?  “Sixty percent of the time, it works every time”

With my luck, I will buy the fainting goat with the bad ticker and on the very first faint, he will have a cardiac arrest, poop himself, and be a vegetable in a coma on life support for 7 years. Then I will be the one that has to sit by his hospital bedside day and night, listening to the breathing machine and the heart monitor, in an attempt to talk him out of his coma, only to finally one day have to make the awful and painful decision to pull the plug and end the suffering.  All the while, angry goat picketers are outside questioning who am I to play God over which goat must live or die.

And unless I was lucky enough to have found and gathered up 33 friends at $5 each to watch my goat’s first, last, and only faint, I’m out 165 bucks, plus the seven years worth of medical bills. Not to mention the goat mob that's constantly looking to rub me out. 

That’s too many questions and not enough answers. 

I’m thinking – Naaa, Naa, Na.

In order not to suffer from the guilt and embarassment of buyer’s remorse, I will refrain from purchasing a fainting goat on impulse at this time.

Oh yeah, did I mention we were on the way to Mexico?

We fly into the Guadalajara airport and head over to the rental car desk in the terminal.  We get there, and of course, no one speaks English.  After much soliloquy and aggravation, (word-of-the-day calendar) I simply pointed to the picture of the car that I wanted to rent, which happened to be a Dodge Durango.  A barrage of laughter erupted from the salespeople and one lady said to me “No Mucho Grande, Gringo!” As laughter continued, she said something else in Spanish that I could only interpret as “You silly little American, We don’t have the large automobiles here like you do in the US.  We have this very tiny one here that gets 200 kilometers to the liter”.  And she pointed to a picture of what appeared to be a small compact car, maybe a Corolla, or a Yugo, or something.  I reluctantly agreed, signed the contract, paid the 3 million pesos, which is only about 13 dollars, and a shuttle bus took us to the rental car station.  As we get out of the shuttle, we see our rental car.  It appeared to be some sort of faded puke green, 1972 Datsun B-210, two door coupe.  The hubcaps were secured onto the rims with bread wrapper ties.  The silver nameplate on the front quarter panel said “POS”.  We loaded our luggage and hopped in…to what appeared to be the back seat.  Apparently, the front seats had been removed to allow for more leg room.  However, my knees still touched the dashboard.  At this point, Skip and I are tired from the flight, so instead of arguing with salespeople to get another car, we laughed it off, tried to make the best of it, cranked 'er up, and rolled out onto the crazy roads of Mexico. 

Our directions must have been for Guadalajara, Oklahoma, because we were immediately lost.  Out on the main highway, a speed limit sign read 70kph (which is about 44mph).  I had the gas pedal all the way to the floor on our POS, and I’m giving her all she’s got Cap’n.  I looked down at the speed-odometer and we were going about 25kph (16mph).  DONKEYS passed us on the left and Chihuahuas passed us on the right. We drove around for a while, lost and without direction, then we rounded a corner to see everyone lying in the middle of the street, on the sidewalks, cars stopped with doors open and no drivers.  What happened?  Did a car explode? No, it was the age old Mexican custom of Siesta time.  A time to stop absolutely everything you are doing, no matter where you are, and take a nap.  Since we were lost and running late, we may have ran over a few people, pretended they were just speed bumps, and continued on.  This is no time for a Siesta.  We are lost foreigners in a foreign country. 
A couple of times along the way we stopped to ask for directions to our hotel, but no one spoke English so we didn’t understand a word. They just pointed in a bunch of different directions with both hands, and said something really fast like “Guadalupe, Caliente, Tupac, Shakira, Chi Chi Rodriquez, Old El Paso, Estupido!” then sent us on our way.

Note to self – learn Spanish before returning to Mexico.  

         

About two long frustrating hours later, we finally arrived at our hotel.  When we walked in, other coworkers from around the US had already arrived, unpacked, showered, ate dinner, congregated in the bar area, and started drinking Tequila shots.  One coworker asked us what took so long as “the hotel was only 10 minutes from the airport”.  (We found out on the way back a few days later, as we followed someone else, she was entirely correct.)  Later that night in my hotel room, I looked out the window and I’m sure I could see the airport.

The next day, after our conference, we took a guided tour of the city streets of Guadalajara.  It was a fun day filled with great culture as street vendors lined each side of the road and sold just about anything you could imagine.  We even found a roadside stand that sold corn-on-a-stick, just like in the movie Nacho Libre.  It was loaded with cheese, butter, and black pepper.  I half expected someone to throw their corn and put somebody’s eye out.  We all joked and laughed about the corn-on-a-stick, while we shopped for our authentic Mexican Wrestling Masks.  Ramsies is the one, he sets the world on fire! Deedle deedle dee!

We went to dinner that night and enjoyed a live Mariachi band and authentic Mexican food outside in the courtyard of the famous and beautiful Santo Coyote Restaurant.  The atmosphere, the lighting, the art, the food and drinks were all fantastic.  But, if you’ve ever been to Mexico, you know the native food is much different than the Tex-Mex style that most of us Americans are accustomed to.  One guy ordered a cheese burrito and they brought him out a live donkey with cheese on it.  Since there are no burritos in Mexico (we invented that), they thought he had meant a 'burro'. 

Dang, too bad it wasn’t a fainting goat.