Mexico City, 1980

I was eight years old and we were waiting for a flight from Mexico City to LA. Whole family was there except my oldest brother who was at college. And there’s this guy there who I remember as being a Mexican dude who starts talking to me. And for some reason I’m trying to talk to him about baseball and explain to him that I’m from Seattle and that our home team is the Mariners and that they’re not very good. Except that, somehow to my mind, we usually beat the Yankees. And I’m trying to explain to him the concept of the New York Yankees without actually saying the name “New York Yankees”, instead circumlocuting into ideas such as “this one team that everyone thinks is the best” and talking about how it’s odd that our team that’s no good often beats this one other team.

What the heck could this (possibly) Mexican dude have thought about that? Was he practicing his English? Was he just trying to be friendly to some stupid (possibly) American eight-year-old? Was there any chance he had any idea what I was talking about?

Did it actually happen? Is there anything that exists in my memory from more than, say, five years ago that *actually happened*? What if there isn’t? What if time and existance started on April 14, 2002 and everything that happened before that, while I “remember” it happening, was instead just a fabrication? What proof do I even have?

It might have been the airport in Merida. Either way in a matter of hours I’d be throwing up on some guy’s pants while the plane sat languishing at the gate at LAX. There’s a lot of languishing at LAX even still. At least that part of the story checks out.

bkd

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