The Police Station, Official Papers, Pleats, and Puddles of Dust

Thanks to a kind and faithful reader - and some recent interesting events - I am inspired to remind the world that I still live. This story is another that I can chalk up to the history of Emily, "Legends of a Mensa" (dum-dum), an ongoing saga.

To make the short and embarassing story much shorter in order for it to sound less embarassing, I was pick-pocketed on Friday for the first time in my life, yet I did not break a sweat. I was told by all my work authorities, the police, and my lawyer that I simply cannot hesitate to act. Still, I paused, thought it through, weighed my options.

Finally, I took the 1/2 hour van-bus ride to the police station in Cholula, yet was redirected to the station in Puebla - at least another hour away. Still, cool as a cumquat.

I disembark a little less than the aforementioned hour later at the street crossing, 9th and 15th. I look again at the address I had scribbled hastily on an envelop.... 8th and 14th. Which, unfortunately did not mean just a mere couple of blocks away. The streets are ordered odds and evens which in short meant that I was on the OPPOSITE SIDE OF TOWN.

Again, and with only thirty measly pesos jangling in my now sadly sagging purse, tac on an empty rumbling stomach and I still decided to hoof it.

40 minutes later, now plodding much more slowly than when I valiantly decided to walk, now sweating just a LITTLE, yet not from the stress, from the thirty-block hike in the afternoon sun. As I near my destination a young man remarks on my unzipped purse, an umbrella sticking out one end, "You'll get robbed like that you know," he warns. I smile wryly at the irony of his timing.

I took out the umbrella and began to weild it more than to carry it, and zipped my purse - to discourage the attacker who may be tempted by my sagging change purse, the only survivor of value. That, and my hand sanitizer.

Upon arrival, people, as I begin to explain my problem, wave me to various different offices, different people, and finally to run the "quick" errand of getting copies made of my passport. The man told me specifically where, he just left out the part where the faded painted-on-the-side-of-a-wall sign "Copies" was covered up by the taco stand.

6 blocks farther than intended and a sudden hightened awareness of a blister forming of the bottom of my heel brings me back to my destination where I am told to sit and wait. "Thank you," I respond with feeling, thankful even now that the wait lasted for over an hour, though the entire time feeling trepedatious that they would require a fee of thirty pesos and then I'd have to beg for some tacos and hitch hike home.

No fee. I found my cheap cheap tacos, and the Lord even blessed me with the nice man who told me of a somewhat ghetto, and not well-known, but blessedly close bus line that took me home.

All to accomplish what? To get a piece of official-looking paper that says I lost my visa. I still have to go to Immigration to get the actual document. Another day of adventure awaits!



PART TWO
Why pleats?

Why puddles of dust?

To be continued...