A very important lesson

August 29, 2008

Oh how wonderful are the sites of Mexico: ancient Mayan ruins, white sandy beaches, magnificent hotel resorts and a naked man standing on his front lawn.

We travel a lot down here, and I'm always the only female. Lately we've been traveling with this group of pastors from Chetumal and our pastor, Miguel. Jonathon always drives, the older pastors in the back snooze, and Miguel engages in thrilling conversation with whoever is in the seat with him. (I would pay attention, but they talk really fast when they get all excited.) So I usually end up zoning out until we hit a town, and then I like to look off to the side of the road and check out the sites. On this particular day I saw more than just huts and dogs.

We made a trip to Coba to talk with some pastors about our upcoming Christmas gift distribution in their area. Coba is somewhat of a trouristy town that has an amazing Mayan ruin site, a lagoon filled with crocodiles and of course, the typical hammock and pottery shops lining the main road. Touristy areas are notorious for their gigantic speed bumps. The crosswalks are actual raised platforms; I guess so you actually see the pedestrians (not a bad idea). As we were leaving town and heading down this main road, busy road, full of souvenir shops- oh and school children- we met a crosswalk.

I was checking out the side of the road as usual as we waited for the car in front of us to cross the enormous speed bump. I happened to look to my left and saw a strange scene taking place at a house. What caught my eye were the reverse lights on the car and I thought "good thing there's a median" (people like to back out into oncoming traffic). That thought was immediately interrupted when I saw a man standing near a small tree, a few yards from the car. He was shirtless and kind of squatting. At first I just thought he was wearing really short shorts, but then I noticed that there were no shorts and the only thing between my eyes (and the eyes of those school children) and his- um- nakedness were his hands!

You know those kind of scenes where you really, really don't want to look, but you just do? That's what was happening. It was like a train wreck. So as I was trying to pry my eyes away from this sight, I couldn't help but wonder what was so important that the conversation between the person in the car and the naked man had to happen right there on the front lawn- while he was desnudo. My first impulse is to say he got "caught in the act" and he was trying to convince his other "significant" other that it wasn't what it looked like. Then I thought, well that's not fair for me to assume that he's a cheater just because he's naked and crouching behind a twig, and there's a car about to back out of his driveway. It could be that his wife was on her way to the store, he was chillin' in the house naked, he forgot to tell her he loved her and so he ran out the door (forgetting his pants, of course) to tell her before she left.

I'm not quite sure of his reasoning for being naked in his yard (it has been really hot here lately), but I did learn a very important lesson that day: the sites on the side of the road are free and you usually get what you paid for.The end.