I Love the Police and the Police Love Me

Saturday, October 25, 2008 

Well, the good news is that it took almost two weeks before I got pulled over again. 

We are suddenly very busy. I volunteered to be the assistant volleyball coach and now I am the Girl’s J.V. Volleyball coach. I have no idea what I’m doing. I never turned out for sports ever so I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen during a practice. 

Nevertheless, I am out there twice a week, after school, coaching volleyball. This is on top of guitar lessons, weekly department meetings, and an after school activity. Then there are the weekends; last Friday was the parent-teacher social, today was the Charity Road Race, and next Friday night is the Halloween party. 

The parent teacher social was fun. There was music and dancing and socializing. The following day we went out to lunch with some of the parents. Both sets of parents have kids in Zachary’s class. One set of them has a student in my class as well. We went to a beautiful little restaurant in Naguanagua, a community just north of here. We sat outside until the rains came. The streets flooded completely with water over my ankles. 

The Charity Road Race is an annual 5k run through the streets of El Trigal. There were over three hundred participants this year! Carrie and Zachary walked while I stood guard at an intersection. It’s a required event for the staff, but it’s pretty fun nonetheless. 

After the race we went to the beach. We had agreed to meet folks at the panaderia in thirty minutes. We raced home and gathered up our things: umbrella, chairs, kiddie tent, sand toys, cooler, clothing bag, snack bag, etc. I grabbed a handful and headed down to put them in the car. 

As I was riding the elevator back up, the power went out. I was stuck in a pitch black elevator car. I suddenly realized how badly I needed to pee. I managed to pull the inner doors open enough to see out and discover that I was pretty close to level with the floor. I shouted for help several times before I remembered that Spanish would probably serve me better. 

Finally, Carrie called out to me. I struggled with the outer doors for a while before I discovered the latch that held one of them closed. I slid it open, but still could not wiggle out. This older woman showed up and began a litany of Spanish that admonished me to get back in the elevator and wait for help. She was afraid that the power might come back on and injure me. The power did come partly back on, but the elevator didn’t move. 

Michael showed up and then ran off to find the building manager for the key to open the outer doors. The building manager was nowhere to be found. I had no choice; in the midst of Carrie and the old lady telling me not to, I played with the outer doors until I finally got them both open. I jumped onto the floor, elated that I was out. The whole thing only lasted about ten minutes, but it seemed like a lot longer. 

By the time we arrived at the panaderia, there were four car loads of people waiting so we caravanned. Everything went swimmingly until we hit the toll plaza. There, I was directed to pull over to the side. This was awkward because our friend Al was with us, but his passport was with his wife in another car. I directed the officer to pull over the other car as well. It turns out that all he wanted was to have me put my seat belt on. With a big sigh of relief we motored on. 

Fortunately, the rest of the day went much better. We had a ball at the beach, playing in these monster waves, rolling around in the sand, and enjoying each others company. We tried to buy dinner from our friend Robert only to find that he has since moved on to greener pastures. We settled for empanadas in El Palito. 

Now I am slightly sunburned, but rested. It was good to get out of town for a day. We need to do that more often. 

MJR