A Carnaval Defense
This week our city and country will be celebrating Carnavale. It is a holiday that has its roots in pagan beliefs and our present-day customs reflect those roots.
One of those customs is the “dousing with water”, representing the insemination of the populace to ensure fertility in the coming year. I really don’t think that this origin is in the uppermost of the minds of the young people throwing water balloons and reloading their automated water cannons. Yet, the water fights still reign.
Often you will see a few “gangs”, across busy streets, lobbing balloons heavy with water. Those balloons are remarkably accurate in their trajectory! However, if a few balloons miss their mark, striking the unsuspecting driver or passenger who were foolish enough to drive with their windows open, then so much the better (from the water attacker’s perspective).
Generally, when you get hit by a water balloon, especially when tossed FROM a moving vehicle, you have no recourse but to just “take it”. However…
To get the full effect of this story, you need a little bit of background about the setting.
Sunday afternoon we were driving through the central part of town, generally full of party-goers. We had timed our trip so that most of the “templos” were still in session, so the sidewalks were pretty empty.
Traffic here is almost always bad… especially downtown, where the streets are barely wide enough for a couple of donkey carts, much less a full-sized car. On the one-way streets, like the one we were driving on, folks will park their cars on one side of the street, to be watched or washed by entrepreneurs as the owners shop or dine nearby.
This was the situation in which we found ourselves on Sunday. The traffic on our small, one-way street was stop and go, mostly stop. I noticed a very clean cut (nice casual dress) young man washing a couple of cars parked in front of a local eating place. He looked like our new generation of upwardly mobile professionals who just wanted to make a few bucks on the weekend, to help his family get ahead.
Traffic had slowed to a stop on the street. As the Tr.U.Fi. (like a bus, but is a van) in front of us inched past the entrepreneur washing the cars, someone in the front seat launched a water bomballoon at this young working guy!
I wish that I had a video to show you the rich range of emotions that flashed across this working guy’s face…
We start with
* SHOCK as the balloon whacks him on the back
* then disgust and angst as he feels the water soaking his shirt and back
* moving to fierce anger that his nice Izod shirt is now wet and
* frustration that his job has been interrupted, to…
DETERMINATION as it dawns on him that he holds in his hands the best means of retribution… his small bucket of soapy water!
Now, remember that traffic can stop without notice. So we have this water guerilla just sitting in the front seat of that Tr.U.Fi., STILL with the window down, just looking for another victim.
So this young man rushes to the Tr.U.Fi.; dumps his bucket of soapy water into the front seat of that van, and then turns in triumph to return to his work!
We were THRILLED! [to see why we appreciated this reaction to frustration in the performance of a job, please read this essay.]
We saw his plan as he was walking toward the van, so we were already rolling down our windows to show him our hands clapping to applaud his self-reliance and defense of his right to work in peace!
His look of righteous satisfaction and joy at being appreciated for acting in a proactive way was a blessing to us as well.
I don’t think this young man will ever feel like a victim again.
And as for the Tr.U.Fi. driver, he should have thought about what might happen BEFORE he allowed his van to become a vehicle of the water balloon wars.
Tr.U.Fi.s drivers are the sole masters of what happens inside their vehicles. He was in for a penny, so he was in for a pound.
Congrats to that young entrepreneur!
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