Why couldn't they just believe my zombie story?

Wednesday was another day off for Chris and the boys, which of course, meant that it was another day on for me. How am I supposed to sit around all day eating bon-bons and watching Dr. Phil if I have the three of them eyeballing me for the remote?  Plus, I have them all convinced that I do important things while they are away, and I can't have my cover blown.  I would have to appear very busy all day, or come up with another plan.

Benjy's calavera

Since it was the Mexican holiday, “El Dia de los Muertos” or the Day of the Dead, I tried to convince them all that we needed to stay in bed all day, because the zombies were out in force, and we could only stay safe by pretending to be already dead. It was a brilliant plan, until it was sabotaged by education. The school had taught them the “real” traditions, they told me, as they bounced into my bed. Apparently, these traditions amounted to eating a bunch of sweets (sugar skulls, sugar coated bread, left over Halloween candy) and hanging out in the graveyard all day communing with the spirits.

“Fine,” I told them, slowly rolling out from under their pile of bodies. “Let’s go celebrate it then. At the cemetery.” 

I reasoned to myself that a field trip would mean less time that I had to spend pretending to do dishes and laundry.

Imagine their enthusiasm as we loaded them into the car. Jacob’s head hurt, Benjy was thirsty (too thirsty to do anything at all), and Andrew just cried and pointed out the window. It didn’t help that we didn’t actually know where a cemetery was located in Tijuana. It also didn’t help that we passed a playground and an ice cream stand.

“Why are you torturing us?” Jacob whined when Chris refused to stop at either place.

After about 30 minutes of driving around in circles looking for a cemetery, we finally happened upon one. I expected it to be filled with families, hanging out, eating food, burning incense and just generally celebrating the lives of their dearly departed. However, the cemetery was fairly vacant with only about three families in sight, which just made us feel like creepy stalkers with a camera, intruding on their intimate moment. It didn’t help that Chris had to drive slowly down the narrow lane all the way to the end before we could find a place to turn around. Clearly, we did not belong there. We did notice (on our drive of stalking shame) that many of the graves were decorated with cheerful, bright flowers at least.

Once again, we found that Mexican holidays don’t seem to really happen in Tijuana. In fact, I saw more people trick or treating in Tijuana on Halloween than I saw communing with the deceased on “El Dia de los Muertos.” It’s just the hybrid nature of the border culture, I guess. And if most people in Tijuana aren’t from Tijuana, then I suppose they don’t have any deceased great-grandparents here to party with.  

Or, we just picked the wrong cemetery.