By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – I’d spent per week away from home and had asked my closest neighbors to “keep a watch out” because burglaries are common nowadays. I’m all the time frightened once I leave the home for a number of days.
After I got here back, every thing was appropriately, including the every day blackouts. There wasn’t any electricity and there was a form of puddle under my refrigerator. I opened it, and the freezer didn’t have an inch of frost, after all.
It scared me just a little, but I held onto the hope that this had happened due to repeated blackouts.
I just had to attend and see while I put in some tubes of minced meat I managed to come up with, I swept the backyard that was a multitude, took a shower and once I got here back, the sound of the freezer was music to my ears.
The clock struck 6 PM and I got able to get dinner began. The electricity got here back on at 4 PM, but they’re saying it’s going to be cut out again at 10 PM.
My neighbor calls over to me from her terrace, to fill me in on what’s happened these past few days. The necessary thing has to do with me and that’s once I prick up my ears.
It seems any person tried to steal some avocados from my backyard, by stretching out their arm through the fence, but they fell in and got stuck. My friend saw any person face down from her house, but she couldn’t make out who it was, until the thief had no other selection but to call out to her husband in a pitiful voice. The embarrassed man had to come back to her aid.
My neighbor told her: “Hey, fulana, we’re not young anymore to be doing these sorts of things, in the event you wanted an avocado, it was higher to have asked for it.”
We had laugh. The funny thing is that this woman is any person who’s all the time on her high horse while ranting and raving about everyone else round her, including yours truly.
I got here home from understanding, night is falling when any person knocks at my door. It’s a person who I barely know. He tells me he has three children and that they’re living in dreadful conditions, that he’s searching for a solution to make a living doing anything, painting houses, cleansing yards, etc. Dirty and raggedly dressed, I believed he might suffer some form of mental disorder.
“You’re my last hope,” he tells me.
“Well, I’m not Jesus Christ but tell me.”
“I’m ashamed to ask you this, but you wouldn’t have something to assist me feed my children?”
“Wait, I can provide you with just a little little bit of rice, beans and a number of avocadoes.”
“No, no, I actually have rice and beans, I would like just a little little bit of meat, some minced meat or a croquette, …”
“No, what?, I’m sorry.”
“OK OK, given me some small avocadoes a minimum of.”
I leave him on the door, I close the door, come back, give them to him and he leaves without saying thanks and I’m left there stunned. Was he telling me the reality and was he really in a tricky spot with real children or was it simply to “screw me over”? Does he think he’s crafty and clever and he saw my idiot face when the one thing I did was feel for his children?
I’m unsure. Anyway, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t going to provide him the minced meat I actually have. I start desirous about how hard life has grow to be, that you must curb your generosity because in the event you don’t, you’ll get eaten alive. Like a certain natural law philosopher once said, “Man is a wolf to a different man”. I actually have little question anymore, he “screwed me over”.
This business with the guy has been attending to me for some time. My ego makes my blood boil, I actually have to learn to be more humble. I determine to take a shower, eat and as there isn’t anything interesting on TV, I sit down and play a little bit of chess on a mobile app until… pow! blackout.
I’m not drained and I am going out to the front door to talk over with my neighbors, to kill a number of hours while sleep involves me since it’s a hot night and I’ll also forget in regards to the incident with the mooch, plus I don’t must work tomorrow.
I ask one in all them in regards to the blackouts recently and he tells me they’ve gotten higher, that a minimum of they are actually sticking to the blackout schedule, so we will a minimum of plan. Bah, the extent of resignation amongst Cubans is so high that I’m left in shock, I’ve all the time had a low tolerance for abuse. It’s best I don’t ask any more questions.
Luckily, the electricity comes back on, it’s nearly midnight and I’m all sweaty. I shower, drink some water, placed on the fan and it takes me just a little while to go to sleep. I can’t get that guy out of my head. “Humility Pedrito, humility, you have got to know how one can lose,” I tell myself…
