Lies
October 23, 2005
My friend the pediatrician also studied to become a pediatric surgeon, and since he still wasn’t earning enough money in Oaxaca to suit his wife, he recently learned esthetic surgery. His consultorio cures babies in the morning and badly-shaped women in the afternoon. He receives clients who want to remove their rolls of fat, flatten their stomachs, straighten their noses, lift their asses and restore their skin to the smoothness of the newborn babies.
My friend is an excellent pediatrician, and enjoys an excellent reputation in Oaxaca. He also takes care of me (I am seventy years old) when I suffer an attack of amoebas, and of my husband (who is eighty) when he is bitten by a dog.
He’s a happy doctor. Not for money to give his wife, but because he loves to cure, and also he loves women. He loves to make them beautiful with his liposuction machine. He likes to shape their breasts – reduce, lift or expand –and afterwards, he admires his handiwork. When babies leave his consultorio they smile. When women leave his consultorio they smile too.
Nevertheless, he told me, he is faithful to his wife, whom he loves. He also told me the six greatest lies in Oaxaca, after the one he just told me. They are:
1. mañana te pago
2. ahorita vengo
3. nomás la puntita
4. no te va a doler
5. no es mi hijo
6. soy soltero.
He told me that people in Oaxaca like himself never get too serious about life; that’s why they shoot rockets and ride motorcycles with three children on the handlebars. He says the poor are not serious about life either. Ni modos, they say, when they wake up the next morning with a headache.
Sometimes I myself say ni modos, for example when the hailstorm chewed up my garden and the roof as well. It’s better to be happy than bitter. Now the sun is shining.
Anyway, who tells the truth all the time?