Como Pesan Los Pesos

Pesos are both priceless and worthless.

Back in LA Naca's youth, LA Seño would give me $50 to spend on my annual month-long summer visit in The Best Country In The World.  $50 doesn't seem like a lot of money if you lived in NacoLAndia, but in our Mexican pueblo in 1988, I was a millionaire. Well, not quite, but close.

First of all, I would stay with my abuelitos in their big house with their menagerie of animals.  They had four miniature doberman pinschers: Tofi (because he was the color of toffee), Chobi (because of a weight issue), Goliat (por tamaño) y Tuin (for looking just like Chobi). They also had 8 siamese cats, but the only ones I warmed up to were Beisol (as in basil, the herb, but pronounced paisa-style), Muñeca and Mascarita.  My favorite recuerdo of the cats is that they would nap together in a mound in the sun, looking like a pile of snow.

You might think that 12 pets is enough for one retired couple living in a small town in Mexico, but not for my ever-ridiculous family.  Oh, no.  Besides, what hogar Mexicano is complete without a birdcage, with or without birds?  My grandparents had seven cages.  A huge one housed all 8 of their canaries, while the rest of the birds were paired off in smaller cages that lined the hallway outside the downstairs bedrooms.  There were couples of bluejays, robins, doves, finches, parakeets and parrots.  My bedroom had the doves outside the window and their constant cooing, which some would find adorable and endearing, made me despise their existence.  I also think that it's from these lovable and eccentric patriarchs that I acquired my flair for the absurd.

My grandma listened to me complain about the damned birds singing at 6am and suggested I sleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  I took her advice and shacked up in one of the spare rooms.

Here's something else you should know about my abuelita.  She was all sass and ¡zas!  No one was spared from her wicked sense of humor.  It didn't matter if you were the local priest, her 80 year-old sister, her youngest and most beautiful granddaughter, she didn't care.  If a laugh could be had at someone's expense, it was going to be had, and she was ALWAYS the mastermind behind it.  But it was done in such a loving way that you, the target, couldn't help but laugh, too...like that time she made me eat a mouthful of garlic cloves by convincing me they were frijoles de olla.

Anyway, back to my new digs upstairs.  Grandma's trucos aside, what I didn't take into account the evening I moved upstairs was that we are a resourceful people who make do with what Nuestro Señor has given us.  My grandparents had a patio upstairs next to the bedrooms, so to make good use of the space, and to be even more paisa, they converted it into a chicken coop, complete with 6 hens and a rooster.  Outside my window.  So, instead of pinches palomas cucurrucucuing, I was woken up at 5:30 the next morning by el mentado gallo!

And let's not forget that the church bells go off every 15 minutes of every single day, come hell or high water, except, of course, at every third hour, when las campanitas chime Shubert's Ave Maria in it's entirety.

Other than not being allowed to sleep in and my grandma pulling practical jokes on me, I was free to do whatever I wanted for an entire month.  No parents, no siblings, just me and my superchido abuelitos taking me anywhere, everywhere and nowhere.  Sometimes, we'd travel to the big towns and visit tios and tias and primos.  Sometimes, we'd climb historic monuments.  And then other times, we'd stay at home and my grandpa would teach me songs on the organ or show me how to splice beta tapes or grandma would school me in damas chinas and teach me how to blow cigarette smoke out my nose.

Other times, I'd take my $50, which back in 1988 was equivalent to $150,000 Mexican Pesos, and go on shopping sprees at each and every papeleria and dulceria in town.  Y ni se habla de las ñiquiñaques (yeah, you read that right) que compraba cada miércoles en el tianguis.  And when in "big" cities, I hooked myself up at 3 Hermanos with jellies in every color I could find, even though I was supposed to be buying oxfords for the next school year.  It's like my mom wanted me to be responsible with money, which I knew back then never, ever would happen.

At the end of my summer vacation, I would count up my leftover pesos and mentally convert them back into dollars.  Answer: casi nada.  At the time, a thousand pesos was worth 30 cents, which just barely bought me a candy bar.  I figured that if I just saved the pesos, I could reuse them when I come back for Christmas and probably get a bag of anything that falls out the back of this:

plus a handful of these:

 and wash it down with this:

(All preceding images courtesy of Google Image Search.)

preferiblemente con sabor a fresa.

So, I kept my pesos for future use, inflation and depreciation meaning nothing to me.  I was too busy showing off  the pink, blue, purple AND green bills in my pocket!  The coins were cool, too, but really heavy.

Considering these recuerdos are from over 20 years ago, I'm happy to say that not much has changed with regards to pesos and my feelings towards spending them.  Except for the fact that the government lopped off three zeros to make room on the currency back in 1993, it's still the same lana: colorful and worthless unless spent immediately.

Luckily for me, LA Doctora knows that I hold pesos close to my heart.  Maybe it's because I keep a cazuelita full of monedas Mexicanas by the front door (who's gonna steal them?) or maybe it's because it's so chafa that she knew just the person who would love it.  In either case, she brought me a regalito for Las Posadas and I was thrilled to receive it!

I present to you mi primer regalo de navidad de 2009:

That's right.  It's my very own pesos-themed Piggy Bancomer.  It's like my own branch of Banamex!  The only design flaw is that there is no little rubber thingy at the bottom to take the money out, nor do the top and bottom come off.  So, much like actual bancos Mexicanos, you can put money in, but you can never take it out.

That being said, I don't know what to do with it.  Any suggestions, other than to put money in it, would be greatly appreciated.

Here's my banco from the other side, complete with Aztec warrior:

El indio Nezahualcóyotl (Náhuatl: 'coyote hambriento') fue uno de los mero meros de Texcoco con raíces Chichimecas. So, in layman's terms, that means he was a naco king ruling over fresa territory (not Oxnard). Naco as he was, he was also a philosopher, a lover of the arts AND the ladies, leaving behind 110 escuincles, but most importantly, he could throw down, too. Basically, he was a Renaissance Man, but on a better continent--in essence, LA Naca's version of the ideal man.

On top of all that, he was the poet laureate of the cien pesos. If you look really closely, this poem of his can be read on the side of his face, like a neck tat:

Amo el canto del cenzontle
pájaro de cuatrocientas voces
amo el color del jade
y el enervante perfume de las flores
pero amo más a mi hermano, el hombre.

That's what I'm talking about, Coyote Hungry.

Hasta mañana.