Digging Your Own Grave

Years ago (it just seems like aeons ago!),
Mari abandoned me (according to plan) in El Paso,
from where I intended to take a train to Mexico City
to study Spanish for a month. Eventually, although
not by train, nor by plane, either, I made it there,
and found a small room near the subway line.

Mari phoned one day, and one of a group of four men
who shared rooms next door, called me to the phone.
After we talked, one of the guys asked me, "Es la otra?"
(Is she "the other one"?) No, I assured them,
she is the only one. They all had an "other one",
in "the little house", when they were away from home.

In Chili, reports say that there is some hostile unrest
among the people gathered to wait for those 33 miners
who have been trapped underground for months.
Not all of the loved ones are the only one. Some
of them are "the others". One report suggests that
one minor alone had four or five women arm-wrestling
each other for the financial payments to be given
to . . . well, in some cases, at least, to spouses.

No, no! This is not a suggestion that Spanish-speaking
people, or brown-skinned people, or any kind of people
living south of El Paso are more accustomed to hanky-panky
than we moral types of Anglo-Saxon persuasion. (No, that
can't be right, either: I am neither Hispanic nor Anglo-Saxon.)

There is a moral in here somewhere, though.
There has to be. I think it is this: Digging your
own grave is not necessarily below-ground work.

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