LESSONS LEARNED:  LOVE LAUGHTER

Whenever Debbie and I are together, you can be sure there will be a lot of laughter.  This week, for example, we walked across the border from San Diego to Mexico.  While in Tijuana we encountered a row of stores that were all selling the same kinds of trinkets.  As we moved from one place to another each shop owner said in a loud whisper, “My prices are better than his!”

I usually ignore people who are trying to sell me things I have no interest in, but Debbie is always friendly.  When she responded to one man’s question about where we are from, he said, “Canadians, eh?”  Clearly this was not his first rodeo.

At one of the shops, Debbie and I each purchased a fridge magnet that depicts a zonkey, an animal which is sired from a male zebra and a female donkey. Zebras, asses, donkeys and horses are all part of the genus Equus.

Zonkeys have become an iconic symbol representing Tijuana as a place providing unusual entertainment to American visitors. The city has a professional basketball team whose name is the Tijuana Zonkeys.

Zonkeys are actually rare animals, but donkeys painted with fake zebra stripes are routinely found on the main street of Tijuana so that tourists will pay the owner to appear in souvenir photos with them.  It might be an innovative idea, but Debbie and I passed on the offer.

Other than the occasional fridge magnet, I no longer buy any souvenirs in my travels.  Debbie, on the other hand, is an avowed cat lover and could not resist a small terra cotta cat with wings that she saw in another shop.  As she was paying for it, she accidentally dropped and broke it.  The store owner told her not to worry about it and replaced it with another.

Having been accustomed to the “if you break it, you buy it” policy of souvenir shops world-wide, this owner’s immediate offer to replace the broken piece of art struck me as odd.  I asked Debbie how much she had paid for the cat, and she said it was only a few dollars.

Nevertheless, I had lingering suspicions.  It is very easy to be confused when dealing with unfamiliar currency.  In the store where we had purchased the magnets, for example, we paid with Mexican money but had been given change in American dollars that I could not be sure accurately reflected the value of the pesos that were owed to us.  I had to insist that we deal only in pesos.

In later discussion we determined that Debbie had actually paid USD$30 for the cat.  She was angry with herself, but sighed and chalked it up to experience. There was nothing else that could be done.

I later burst into laughter when she sent me the following text from her hotel room.  I still laugh out loud whenever I think about it:

“You’re not going to believe this.  I got a flying cow not a flying cat.  Must have given him the wrong one to wrap.  Oh man, know anyone who likes cows?”