Friday, January 15, 2010

Juan Wayne and the Bicycle Thief

One of Sunnyview school's high school students lived with his parents and sister in one of the many high rise “tower” apartments of Torremolinos. I believe they lived on the fourth floor, but that’s only an approximation. One day he looked out the window and saw someone trying to steal his bicycle. He grabbed a bb gun and made a citizen’s arrest on the miscreant, marching him to local police headquarters. The police were not gratified to see a civilian taking such a pro-active crime fighting stance.

They weren’t very happy with the bb gun either. After Franco took over as undisputed dictator of Spain, he tried to ensure that civilians did not have guns. That way, his dictatorship could remain undisputed. In 1975, the last year of Franco’s life, rules had been relaxed a little and people with clean records could own small caliber rifles and air guns. But the police were not happy.

As the boy left the station, the police asked him, “Hey, Juan Wayne, do you mind if we make our own arrests next time?”

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Barbers of Torremolinos

Shortly after we arrived in Spain our son Eric and his friend, Victor DeGroot, stormed into the maid’s quarters, a tiny room of our house where I had set up my writing shop. It was a good room in which to write. It was so small you couldn’t do anything else. You’d bark your knuckles shaking martinis.

The two boys were livid, enraged. They verbally fell over each other trying to tell me their sad story. It seems that they had been riding a motor scooter the wrong way up a one-way street. Something junior high school boys do all the time. Suddenly the cops stopped them. The boys expressed their indifference to receiving a ticket but were taken aback when the cops expressed their indifference in writing them one.

They said writing a ticket to the children of rich foreigners was pointless because their foolish fathers would simply pay it for them. Instead, the police said that if they caught Eric and Victor being bozos again, they would CUT THEIR HAIR! And no razor cut hair style, either. Buzz cut.

The boys both sported shoulder length hair. Eric’s was straight and blond. Victor’s was dark and curly. Both boys were outraged. They were sure their civil rights were being violated. I wanted to point out that as foreigners living in Spain, we didn’t have very many of those, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

Finally they paused for breath. “Can they do that, Dad?” Eric asked.

“Do it?” I replied. “I’ll help them. I’ll sharpen their scissors.” The boys stormed out in anger and resentment. That was good. The cops got the boys’ attention. Let’s hear it for anger and resentment.