A few years ago, when I started down this path, I wanted to be a WRITER. It all seemed glamorous – living in the tropics and banging out a best selling novel in between rum drinking contests, bull fights, and answering fan mail from exotic female admirers.  

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Not even a little bit.  

It’s been three years after I hit the reset button on my life, walking away from my comfortable existence as a businessman in California. I sold or donated all of my possessions and moving down to Costa Rica to live by the beach, bringing nothing but a laptop and a surfboard, to chase my dream of being a writer. 

Now, two books and thousands of written pages later, the secret to success has been magically revealed to me:

Hard work.

I know, not as exciting as I hoped for, but there it is. Scratching out a living penning words isn’t as much about being a WRITER, as it is about WRITING. Author Mary Heaton said it best:

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

In fact, most great writers have dedicated everything they had to the craft – and then more. They chose a life of self-imposed poverty, isolated hard work, and even ostracism from “polite” society to pursue their passion (though I believe polite society is overrated). It’s about putting in their 10,000 hours, as Macklemore raps, and then some, because they love their art so much they can’t NOT write.  

The collateral damage includes comfort, safety, material gain, friendships, relationships, and even sanity.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Ernest Hemingway.

Even though it was my lifelong dream to be a WRITER, all of that hard work didn’t sound so fun to me. Couldn’t I just skip ahead to the good parts? Still, I devised a three-year plan to lead me to the promise land of literary greatness and financial gain. Here it is: 

My Three-Year plan:

1. 1. Do it.
2. 2. Do it well.
3. 3. Do it over and over, and monetize it.

Granted, that may be the exact business plan of every hooker in Reno, but I’d like to think that my plan was (slightly) more socially ambitious, and by the end of my third year I would have “made it,” breaking into the industry and earning a comfortable living as a writer. Let me explain.

The first year I wanted to write and publish a book. It would be ideal to write the BEST book I could, but just writing one and going through the indie publishing process was overwhelming enough, without worrying about pesky little details, like KNOWING WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING. I got started in my new beachside home, Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in the heart of the rainy season when the dirt roads were a muddy mess. By the middle of the dry season, in the arid heat and the dust, the book was done. 

“Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” Mark Twain.

Writing that first book was an exhausting, scrambling process, about as far from my comfort zone as I’ve ever been. At times I didn’t think I was going to make it, or make it out of there in once piece. It was committing my soul to the page only to be trampled, documenting my ridiculous humanity for all the world to laugh at. I rushed at the wrong times, lost steam when I needed it most, and generally made every mistake I could. But, from some small miracle, the book still came out entertaining enough to pick up. 

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell.

The second year of my three-year plan was ‘doing it well.’ I actually had two choices here. Upon releasing their first book, most authors focus on selling books. They become expert marketers, and that is where they focus all of their attention. I totally understand that inclination, but standing at that crossroads, I chose a different path. I would focus on learning my craft. Sales be damned, I was going to invest all of my work and focus into becoming the best writer I could be. 

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
Allen Ginsberg.

I eschewed any chance of profit with the first book and instead moved up the coast from Costa Rica, to the charming fishing town of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to write. I sequestered myself in a cheap apartment in a local barrio, dirt alleys in the jungle living in the midst of stray dogs and roosters and the local people who made $2 a day. I was scared at first, in a third world country where some people were desperate just to eat, and many a night I slept beside a machete or carried a knife in my backpack. 

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Henry David Thoreau.

But I always made it to the dawn, and thanked God for it, sitting down at my desk to document that gratitude with vigor. The locals in my barrio sang as they hung laundry, the smoke from the cooking fires in their front yards rising to my windows on the ocean breeze. It was perfect.

“Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” Stephen King.

I did two things for those six months: I read, and I wrote. I read everything I could find ABOUT writing; character development, theme, conflict, dialogue, emotion, etc. There was no place to buy books, so I Googled these topics and read every article I could find, and then when I’d exhausted those someone brought me down a Kindle, so I could download books about writing. Pretty soon I’d read all of those, so I started reading biographies of writers.

Do you know what the common theme was? Hard work. Writers write a lot, and when they aren’t writing they read a lot, and that’s how they get better.

“If you can’t create, you can work.” Henry Miller.

So I wrote, too. Every morning I woke up at dawn (Ok, I woke up at 2 a.m. when the roosters and stray dogs started in, but I went back to sleep) and brewed some locally-grown coffee, splashed it with Baileys, and sat down at my desk, just about the time a clunky pickup truck rolled through the barrio, selling freshly-picked mangos and bananas.

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired to write at 9 o’clock every morning.” Peter De Vries.

I put on my headphones and cranked some dancehall reggae or Michael Franti or Citizen Cope, and I wrote. It didn’t matter WHAT I wrote, I just unleashed whatever was in my subconscious without letting my mind get in the way. My fingers flew around with a life of their own, blurring with the speed of a DJ spinning records. 

“Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say.” Edgar A. Poe.

One day I rescued a skinny, whipped four-week old puppy off the street. At first he was too small to walk far, so I carried him everywhere. He was black and white so I named him Panda, and I fed him milk and put him on a towel on my desk as I wrote. I said hi to the locals as I walked through my barrio into town, and the little kids abandoned their soccer ball and ran out to play with Panda. 

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”  Saul Bellow.

And then on August 1, the walls of my house in the barrio shook side to side and dishes fell as a huge earthquake rocked the town. Church bells tolled for everyone to evacuate because of an imminent tsunami, but to me it was a signal to start the first chapter. So I wrote. Three months later, when the school kids were lighting fireworks in the streets for Dia de Indepencia, my manuscript for South of Normal, was done, 1,000 pages of sunshine and snake pits.

But there was no time to pat myself on the back, because that’s when the REAL work began – rewriting and editing. So I put my head down and got busy, once again.

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.” John Irving.

Soon, everyone in town knew me, and Panda was so big and strong he was pulling ME when we strolled the cobbled streets. The abuelitas, grandmothers, in their rocking chairs on the front porch waved to me and wished me God’s blessing, and all of the little kids begged to take Panda to the beach. 

“Como esta su libro?” they would ask - how is your book? - for word got out that I was a writer. 

My last week before leaving Nicaragua our little town was infested with rich vacationers from Managua. The parties and fireworks went off all night, every night, but I had work to do. So I took Panda to the ferry and cruised over to Ometepe, cajoining islands in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, one of the only places on earth with fresh water sharks. Each island had an active volcano rising steeply from its center, and the beaches were jet black volcanic sand like crushed moonstone. Panda ran and played and I kept working.  

It was there in Ometepe that I understood the wisdom that all of those great writers were whispering to me; to write well you need to go through a process of failure, of discomfort, of displacement from the normal human condition. You need thrust yourself into a volcano, sacrificing your ego, so you can become connected to everyone and everything. Only through this ultimate surrender will you truly be able to write something important, and serve the world.  

“So you want to be a writer? Unless is comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it.  Unless the sun inside you is burning you’re gut, don’t do it.” Charles Bukowski.  

My last night in town I threw a big party for the wonderful people in my barrio as a thank you, a pig roast at the very top of the hill by the town’s water tank. All of the mothers cooked and the children gave me gifts. The power went out so the DJ couldn’t play and it was dark, but we took out flashlights and someone turned on their car stereo. And then it started pouring rain but we didn’t care – we danced and hugged each other and celebrated life. 

“Suertes,” they said - good luck, and I finally realized - those people, the same one's I feared at first, had been keeping ME safe the whole time, watching out for me. I handed the children Panda’s leash and he wagged. He was a San Juan del Sur dog, and would be happiest running on the beach with them.

In some ways I think that was the best part of my life, because down there I left behind the romance of being a WRITER, and instead, fell in love with WRITING itself.  

I’m happy with the choice I made, to focus mastering my craft instead of becoming a pesky promoter interested only in sales. And I am happy with my book, South of Normal, because, although flawed and deeply imperfect, it is honest, and I gave it everything I had.

“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.”
Ray Bradbury.

Now, on the eve of its release, I shift into part three of that supremely important three-year plan: to do it over and over, and monetize it.

This is it, my chance to cash in, to re-enter polite society. I know how to do it - I’ve paid attention to all of the books and articles and blogs and podcasts about promoting yourself, getting attention, landing an agent, and making money. It would be easy for me to invest my precious time here on earth into selling books.

But I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s not in me. In that respect, I guess I’ve failed at my three-year plan, because I could care less about being a WRITER. I just want to write. 

So, if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll change my three-year plan. I think I’ll just relive my second year over and over, stuffing a backpack, heading to the airport, and disappearing once again into that big, wild unknown. I’m thinking that Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia sound good, where I’ll look for that tiny little hut on a secluded beach amidst the smiling locals. And in that perfect soulful silence of barking dogs, clacking roosters and the throng of humanity, I will write. And every morning I will stare out at the sea and say “Thank you, thank you. For this beautiful failure, thank you,” and then I’ll sit my ass down and get to work.

-Norm :-)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” William Faulkner.
 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

The day dream is a familiar one; you’re sitting on a white sand beach by the crystal clear ocean, a soft tropical breeze blowing as you sip your third mojito and finish up the day’s work – which took a grand total of an hour on your laptop. 

Unfortunately, then you always wake up at a desk stacked with never ending paperwork, shackled inside some cubicle. The drool from your mid-afternoon doze-off has short circuited yet another keyboard, which will have to come out of your paycheck (the third one this month) and your boss starts whining because you forgot to put a cover sheet on your TPS report and he needs you to come in to work on Saturday. And someone stole your red stapler again.

That’s a more likely scenario for all of the 9 to 5’ers out there, but here’s the good news – the dream is possible. It’s out there, ready for you. You can travel or live anywhere in the world and take your job with you, still making money in the U.S. (or your home country) virtually. It’s not easy, and it may take a lot of research, planning, and hard work, but it IS possible to live your life by a beach, or on top of a mountain, in a foreign country and still make a living.  

In fact, people have been doing it for years, but many chose to work from home instead of living by the beach, superwoman stay-at-home moms who earn extra money AND take care of the kids. You’ll also hear it called working “virtually,” “telecommuting,” or just working online, and a U.S. Census report shows that the number of people who work virtually or from home has soared by 41% in the past decade. 

Every year there are an estimated 6 million U.S. citizens living abroad. Some of them chose to live in foreign countries and become full-time expatriates, while others go abroad to study, backpack around for a summer, volunteer, or do business. For the youth in other countries, England, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe, taking a year or two to go backpack around the world is so common it’s almost a rite of passage.  

Many of them try to find jobs in their host countries, but I’m seeing more and travelers and expats working virtually from their laptop and making enough money to keep their dream alive, especially in some countries where living expenses may be much lower. This trend is in its infancy, thanks to a business focus on Globalization and the explosion of useful technology in the last five years. The concept was celebrated in Tim Ferriss’s wildly popular book “The 4-Hour Work Week.”   

Whether you are a stay at home mom looking to work, a college student who wants to backpack around Europe and still make some money, or a 9-5 burnout who gives it all up and lives abroad (like me) the dream is alive and well.  

Now I’m going to tell you how it’s done.  

First we start off with a specific list of jobs you can do from anywhere. In the second part of this article I'll go over WHERE to go to find these jobs, and HOW to get them.


Here is a list of jobs you could do virtually:

1. Writer.
 Selling blogs/articles on the Internet for magazines and newspapers, sites, or businesses.

2. Copy editor.
You can write and edit content for advertisements, sales brochures, manuals and guides, etc. 

3. Virtual call center/Customer service rep.
 As long as you have a phone and a headset (or a computer) you can take calls anywhere in the world. 

4. Web developer.
 This is one of the most common live-and-work-abroad jobs, and it does take a technical knowledge of HTML, Wordpress, or other web build code.

5. Blogger.
 You can start your own blog and attract enough visitors to start selling advertising or products.

6. Survey taker.
 They actually pay people to take surveys! Search engines also hire people to review their sites.

7. Telenurses.
 Virtual medical care is a rapidly growing field.

8. Teleradiologist.
 Radiologists mostly review x-rays, so this is easy to do virtually with the right technology.

9. Video producer and editor.
 Produce videos for corporations, non-profits, or entertainers.

10. Technical writer.
 Technical writers design manuals and instructions that are very specific and task-oriented (boring.)

11. On-line post-secondary teachers.
 There is a growing trend of online universities, colleges, and also high schools.

12. Translators.
 The world always needs people with good language skills to translate their messages. If you can speak two languages fluently, you will be in great demand!

13. Virtual tax preparer.
 You can prepare those pesky income tax returns over your laptop.

14. Phone sex operator.
 Do you really need me to explain this one?  “Brown chicken, brown cow!”

15. Data entry.
 Menial and unfulfilling, but who cares if you can do it by the beach?

16. Excel and Power Point specialist.
 If you know the technical intricacies of Excel companies will pay you to set up complex spread sheets and data systems, or prepare PP presentations for sales people, speakers, and organizations.

17. Medical transcriptionist.
 Transcribe notes from doctors and surgeons.

18. Medical billing.
 One of the work-from-home stalwarts, you can organize medical billing records for doctors offices.

19. Counselor or Therapist.
 Sit on your own leather couch and talk to someone about your problems via Skype, for $20 an hour, not $150 an hour.

20. Outside sales.
 Many sales jobs can be done via Internet, phone, fax, Skype, etc. and are based solely on commission.

21. Virtual assistant.
A lot of busy business people don’t want to hire a full time assistant in-house, so they outsource daily tasks to a virtual assistant.

22. Sell travel art and photography.
Though it’s a competitive field, many people sell their travel photography and artwork online.

23. Tourism.
Attract people to certain destinations with websites, social media, etc. and help them arrange hotel stays, condo rentals, fishing trips, etc. The proprietors will usually pay you a 20% finders fee.

24. Affiliate marketing.
You can promote other peoples’ goods or services on your website or blog, and if users click through and purchase something, you get a commission.

25. EBay broker.
 You can maintain an eBay story from anywhere in the world. Either hire people to package and mail the items for you, or utilize the ‘drop ship model,’ (below)

26. Reseller, drop ship model.
You sell products online, but instead of packaging and shipping the items yourself, your order automatically goes through to a warehouse that does everything for you. That means you can sell anything to anyone from anywhere and never touch – or even see – the product!

27. Graphic artist.
Every company needs a logo, infographic, or other artwork.

28. Wedding/event planner.
You can handle all of the minutiae of organizing big events, corporate or personal, and get paid to do it.  

29. Grant writer.
Writing grants for nonprofits and research is a super important field, yet requires a specific writing format. Nonprofits are ALWAYS applying and reapplying for grants and funding, so you will never be out of work. 

30. Social media consultant.
Every company wants to market their brand or service through social media and have access to an unlimited number of new customers, but many of them only know how to use Facebook enough to post inappropriate political comments and send out birthday requests. Help them, please! 

31. Publicist.
 Send out press releases, make connections, and garner traditional media attention.

32. Cottage Publishing.
Attract clients who want to self-publish a book and help them from start to finish, using cheaper subcontractors or services, and then mark up the price to include your fee.

33. Desktop Publishing.
Design the layout and graphics for menus, brochures, books, newsletters, etc.

34. Software engineer.
If you know all of that fancy technical stuff, you’ll be in high demand and can work from anywhere.

35. IT Professional.
These days an IT professional can assume control of your computer virtually, and poke around and fix the problem without even being there.  

36. Educational tutoring.
Tutor children in after school programs or learning centers, or college kids in specific subjects.

37. Language teacher.
Believe it or not, knowing English well is a commodity, and these days you can teach English via your laptop anywhere in the world (see profile at the end of this article)


38. Travel Agent.
You can arrange and book airfare, travel, and vacation packages virtually. The job of travel agent has actually shifted toward a work-at-home model years ago.

39. Franchise owner.
If you own a Subway store, you’re not the one expected to bake the bread. So hire great managers and supervise virtually. Think about it – you don’t even need a staff if you own a laundry mat or vending machine.

40. Landlord.
Own rental properties and manage them from abroad. The check will be in your bank every month and you can have a handyman on call. You can even rent out your own house while you’re out there traveling!

41. Answering service or scheduler.
Many businesses use an answering service during off hours, or someone to manage their busy schedule. You can take on as many clients as you can handle.

42. Insurance adjuster.
A lot of tedious work in the insurance field – like worker’s comp audits, for example, has been outsourced to virtual employees.

43. Support for open-source software. 
There are software systems out there like Linux, Wordpress, Dupral etc. that may be free, but people will pay for technical support.  

44. Accountant/Bookkeeper.
Manage the books and accounting for any business, from the beach.

45. Financial advisor.
Many independent financial advisors can work virtually – why not? They are dealing in information and expertise, not standing on the trading floor on Wall Street.

Does that help? Look for part 2 of this article where I reveal the specific websites you'll use to get these virtual jobs, and even actual companies that are hiring right now. 

I'll also talk about the application and interview process, avoiding scams, and virtual employment code of conduct.  

Do you have more questions about living or working abroad?  Email me and I’d be happy to help. 

Happy job hunting, and safe travels!

Norm :-)

Work Abroad Profile: Tommas Coldrick
Working virtually as an English teacher at an online school.

How long have you lived abroad/where have you lived?
 I'm from England, originally, and have lived abroad the last four years, in Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A. (Texas), The Czech Republic, China, Nicaragua and Russia.

What have you done for work?
Australia- Concreting and steel fixing. New Zealand- Nightclub security. U.S.A. Online teaching. The Czech Republic- English Language Teacher. China- Head Teacher of an international school. Nicaragua- manager at a bar/restaurant and teaching English online. Russia- Head Teacher of an international school, teaching English online.

What are the challenges?
Cultural differences always seems to be the biggest challenge while working overseas. Language can also be a challenge, but more of a fun challenge.

What are the unique opportunities?
Getting to fully immerse yourself into a completely different way of living, is one of the coolest experiences anyone can have. It also opens up your mind, and humbles you in such prolific ways, I can't even begin to describe. Being able to work within a different country, within a different culture; allows you to see the world in a different light, and it allows you to understand the unknown, just that little bit more.

Where do you see growth in careers working virtually?
Having taught online, I see the benefits to virtual careers. I was able to have a half decent paid job in England, Nicaragua, and the U.S. I didn't have to worry about finding work in each new destination; It was already there. 

What advice would you give young travelers who are looking to work while they live/travel abroad?
Do it! Ask yourself "What do I really want to be?" "Where do I really want to be?" Once you know the answers to these questions, then there's no stopping you. So go ahead and quit your day job, book a flight, and don't regret a moment! You will experience things that you would never imagine, you'll meet the most interesting people on the planet, you'll broaden your views on life, and you'll make friends who you will treasure forever.

You can email Tommas if you want to say hi!

1. Prostitution is legal but possession of pornography is illegal.  They even have unions, membership cards, health benefits, and police protection.

2. In most areas people cannot flush toilet paper because the pipes are old and only 1” wide, so toilet paper goes in the trash basket.  

3. Pedestrians have very few rights in Costa Rica.  They joke that Ticos love to use their horns but hate to use their brakes!  It’s so bad that the Tico word for “speedbumps” is “Son muertos,” or, “The dead people.” 

4. When raising your glass or beer to say “cheers” to Ticos you are supposed to look them directly in the eye, or else you’re cursed with seven years of a bad sex life. (apparently I haven’t been making very good eye contact, then). 

5. Costa Ricans have no addresses and very few street signs.  When mailing something or giving directions, they just point out proximity to nearby landmarks.  So when I lived in San Pedro, a suburb of the main city, San Jose, my address was “50 meters south and 100 west of the church of San Pedro.”

6. Earthquakes are common in Costa Rica.  They may get 2-40 per month depending on the movement of techtonic plates.  Almost all of them are small, though they got a 7.6 last time I was living there.

7. Costa Ricans are not good at soccer compared to their Central and South American neighbors!

8. Ticos put coffee in their babies bottles along with milk, and also give it to young children.   

9. The most popular national beer is Imperial.  They drink it over ice with lime and salt, called a “michelada.”

10. "Guaro" is the national liquor, sort of like a fire-water sugarcane tequila. There is no denying it's strong,  but I find it kind of nasty.   

11. Fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried chicken do home deliveries.

12. The meter in a taxicab is know as the “Maria,” which is a loose reference to the Virgin Mary and her honesty and virtue.

13. Cheap brand cigarettes are only about $1.65 per pack. 

14. You aren’t allowed to wear sunglasses or hats inside of the banks (due to so many robberies)

15. The slang is much different than proper Spanish.  Slang is called “pachuco.”  

16. One slang word is to call someone “Mopri.”  This is supposed to mean “primo,” or cousin, backwards.  In the 90’s Costa Rican teen culture went through a phase where they were saying words backwards.  Maybe around the time of Kriss Kross here in the US?

17. A lot of popular bands play the main stadium in San Jose, most recently the Red Hot Chili Peppers and then Lady Gaga.  

18. Scientist actually named a species of Costa Rican fern after Lady Gaga after she played there.  I’m not making that up!

19. They have bullfights in CR but instead of the bull being harmed, it runs free around the ring and tries to harm the brave teens and men who jump in there for sport.  Almost every little town has a festival with bullfights during the holidays.  

20. CR is one of the biggest cocaine transit nations in the world, as 90% of the cocaine that ends up in the US comes from Columbia to Costa Rica, and then up through Central America into Mexico and across the border.  

21. There are roughly the same criminal penalties for marijuana as there are for cocaine and all drugs

22. Robert August brought the surf scene to Costa Rica with his 1968 documentary, Endless Summer, and then Endless Summer II.

23. If you get pulled over in Costa Rica the police can probably be paid off for around $40.  

24. You are not allowed to wear shorts in a government or public office in Costa Rica - they see it as disrespectful and may turn you away. 

25. They say there are Three Great Costa Rica Lies.  It took me a year of living in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, to find them all out.  They are a bit secretive but I do reveal them in my new book, South of Normal.  

-Norm  :-)

If you liked these, check out 30 Fun and Wild Facts about Costa Rica. ​

     Can I be honest with you? I was really worried about dating in Costa Rica for another reason. When I finally did get the chance to meet a lovely nice young lady and we courted and went on seventeen dates and I met her family and got her father’s permission and we got matching tattoos and Googled each other and were finally ready for a special, intimate night together, there was one possibility that could scare Little Norm right back into my drawers: Jungle Bush. You’ve heard of 70s Bush, right? Well Jungle Bush was (in my mind) the tropical equivalent of 70s Bush. I won’t go into too much detail, but for my readers who weren’t born until Puff Daddy started rapping, here’s a snapshot: In the continental United States in the 1970s there was a whole generation of young people who were…how can I say this with the utmost sensitivity…they were all DIRTY. It was hip to wear filthy bellbottoms and man-blouses and everyone went barefoot and slept with each other because, of course, STDs weren’t invented until the second term of the Reagan administration. They listened to horrible music with finger cymbals and three-hour sitar solos and did a lot of drugs. Somehow that was all supposed to stick it to THE MAN and bring the troops home from Vietnam. In my opinion, they should have made THE MAN listen to the music and they would have signed a peace treaty the next day. Anyway, a horrible byproduct of their lax hygienic life choices was that they didn’t have time to focus on personal grooming south of their equators, if you know what I mean. So everyone walked around with 70s Bush, and when they took off their undergarments they all looked eerily similar to Kareem Abdul Jabbar when he fought Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon.” Somehow they found this attractive and kept copulating with reckless abandon—it must have been the drugs.

Yes, it was thirty-something years later, but I was in Costa Rica, a Third World country of rainforest where their main economic exports were bananas and sugarcane. Where were battery-powered personal shavers on that list, I wondered? It was called a Brazilian Wax and not a Costa Rican Wax for a reason. They couldn’t even pave their own roads, for Christ’s sake. Pornography wasn’t legal and I had to smuggle in vibrators for the local women! I was terrified that when I finally get intimate with a nice Tica, she’d suffer from a case of Jungle Bush and I’d have to excuse myself from the festivities by faking a groin pull and climb out of the bathroom window naked and run away and possibly move out of town.

Yup, times we're tough on the dating front in Costa Rica. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

That day has arrived, the highly anticipated moment that only comes twice a year and completely rocks your world.  No, I’m not talking about the two times a year you have sex, I’m talking about Daylight Savings Time.  

I’m not a big fan.  The morning of the time change we run around the house furiously, trying to set every clock back as if a giant comet will slam into the earth and wipe out humankind if we don’t get it all done by 8 a.m.  Just when we think we’ve adjusted every clock, watch, radio, and appliance timer in the house, we’re reminded that there’s the matter of the dashboard clock in the car to attend to.  That in itself takes 45 minutes, trying to cram the end of a paperclip into a microscopic opening while simultaneously pushing the correct buttons with the other hand, crossing us up and eliciting curses that aren’t appropriate for a Sunday morning.

I highly recommend leaving the clocks alone and just waiting six months until they move back one hour again, but that doesn’t seem to be a popular opinion.  

Instead, everyone complains about the hour of sleep they’re going to lose, so much so that they lose 2.3 hours just talking about it.  I have to admit, when someone cheerily tells me “Don’t forget to spring forward eight Sundays from now!” I want to slap them.  And if I hear another bad joke about how we lost an hour, I’m going to kick someone in their balls.  We did not lose an hour.  You can’t just “lose” an hour (other than by watching Burn Notice.)   And we don’t ever “get” an extra couple hours of daylight.  They’re all out there anyway, no matter if we set our clocks backward or forward or stand on our heads and speak in tongues. 

I understand it used to be a “sunlight thing,” but why didn’t people just wake up one hour earlier?  Wouldn’t that have been easier than all of this nonsense?  Imagine if aliens came down and examined our society from an objective, clinical viewpoint.  There would only be one conclusion they could come up with about the bizarre concept of Daylight Savings Time, before they got in their spaceship and went back to the planet Zerthion Phobius 9.2 and sent another flaming comet down to blow us up: whoever invented Daylight Savings Time was really, really high. 

You have to smoke something pretty strong to come up with: “Dude let’s just pretend that it’s an hour earlier, and we’ll tell everyone to change their clocks at exactly the same time, all over the world.  Yeah, that will work.  Now light that incense and roll up another one.”

A little internet digging reveals that a nice fella named George Vernon Hudson from New Zealand invented Daylight Savings time in 1895.  I’m telling you, Georgie was smoking the good shit.  He's #1 on our list.  DST was used on and off in Europe during times of war, but didn’t even become universal in the United States until the 1970’s, to help cut electricity usage during the energy crisis.  The 1970’s?  People talk about DST like it was some biblical mandate.   

This all led me to thinking, as it often does, who else throughout history probably smoked marijuana.   

Some of them seem obvious…

2. Whoever came up with the spelling for “Wednesday” was definitely hitting the pipe.  (I recommend we officially change it to “Humpday.”)

3. The astrologists who all of a sudden decided Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore were baked.  How are you a planet one day and then you’re just a 5,000 mile round ball of rocks the next day?  That’s like saying one day, “Sorry New Jersey, you’re not a state anymore.”  Well, bad example – that would actually make sense.  But you know what I mean.

4. Who else?  Albert Einstein?  What do you think?  Have you seen his hair?  He shagged Marilyn Monroe.  That dude could party.  

5. Mother Theresa probably hit the bong every once and a while – she was WAY too nice. 

6. Ben Franklin was as high as a kite.

7. Michael Jackson was an alien.

8. Whoever built the pyramids had to be smoking reefer.  In fact, the Egyptian Pharaohs did use marijuana for its health and transcendental benefits.  

9. Christopher Columbus carried cannabis sativa seeds on board his ships, and thus takes credit for introducing marijuana to the Americas.  No wonder why he sailed hecka slow and kept getting lost.

10. Queen Victoria’s private physician prescribed marijuana when she had bad menstrual cramps. 

11. Joan of Arc led the French army to victory over the British in the 15th century when she was only 19 years old, but then was accused of using “witch drugs” (including cannabis) and burned at the stake.  She probably fucked up the rotation.  Puff, puff, pass, Joan.     

12. They’ve found residue of cannabis on clay pipes unearthed from William Shakespeare’s garden in England, though he would claim “Doth thinketh it belongs to yee landscaper.”  

13. Jesus was a hippie, walking around the dessert with Birkenstocks and stinking of patchouli oil, never having any money or bringing enough food, but somehow still making do.  I saw him selling hash brownies at a Dave Matthews show in Colorado once – true story.

14. Buddha?  He sat around naked except for a loincloth with half-closed eyes as people brought him incense and snacks as offerings.  Yeah, that’s an easy one.

15. Michelangelo had to be stoned when he painted the ceiling of the Sixteen Chapels.  That’s a lot of manual labor. 

16. Thomas Jefferson grew marijuana.

17. So did George Washington.

18. Michael Phelps, who won more Olympic medals than anyone else in history, had the munchies so bad that Subway signed him as a spokesperson.  

19. Clinton tried it but couldn’t figure out the inhale thing correctly, 

20. Where Barrack Obama got it right.  

21. Not only did George Bush smoke weed, but Mr. “War on Drugs, God talks directly to me,” was a sloppy drunk and a big cokehead when he went to Yale. 

22. Al Gore invented marijuana.

23. The ancient Greeks gave marijuana to teenage boys to try and calm their sexual urges enough to sleep through the night 

Who else are some documented marijuana smokers throughout history?

24. Winston Churchill,
25. Walt Disney,
26. The Chinese emperors,
27. John F. Kennedy,
28-30. Mega-wealthy entrepreneurs Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Sir Richard Branson.

That’s pretty good company.  Me, personally?  I can care less about smoking or not smoking these days, but I’m glad to see the U.S. is starting to get its head out of its ass and loosening up on a plant that’s been on earth as long as we human beings have.  

But either way, please, I’m begging you, someone get stoned enough to come up with a better idea than the Daylight Savings Time thing.  

Wait…what’s that?  What did you say?  Someone just reminded me cheerily to “remember to spring forward today, buddy, because we lost an hour.”  Please excuse me for a second – I have to go kick someone in the balls.  

*****
To read more semi-funny writing by Norm I would recommend picking up his new book, South of Normal.  Click on the book cover to see more.

 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

TamaRumors

One morning I watched a dog eat a dead iguana in the road. We all did—it was our morning entertainment. The crew at Sarita’s Bakery sat outside and watched the mangy dog circle the carcass, ripping it apart. After it was done it rolled in its kill and laid down to sleep in the sun. When a car drove up, the driver had to swerve around because the dog was too lazy to move.

“Look at that dog. He’s not even moving,” Surfer Scotty said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s going to be a hot one today,” Salty Dog Rodney said.

“Sure is,” I said. It always was hot so I don’t know why we bothered saying it every day, but we did. 

I liked the streets when it was early, sitting outside Sarita’s when she first opened, watching the other shopkeepers hosing down the sidewalks in front of their stores, a deliveryman with bread steaming from the basket of his bicycle. Sleepy Nicaraguan and Dominican workers walked up the road toward the nice houses in white uniforms, their feet still hurting from the day before but smiling and thanking God just the same. 

Sarita’s Café was the center of the Tamarindo gossip exchange. Gossip, or “el chisme” in Spanish, was the central activity in town, the only currency shared by all. It was so prevalent that locals referred to our town as TamaRumor. We had plenty to talk about—there’s nothing more dynamic than a small town in the tropics. In fact, the smaller the town, the more complex the relationships, the more the vines grow intertwined. 

Information in Tama spread strictly by word of mouth. There was no local TV coverage, no local radio, no town hall I could see, no town meetings, and no community bulletin board. There was one monthly rag that covered local events and posted a surf report, called…the TamaRumor. The only daily newspapers were in San Jose, so far away, both in distance and culture, that it was like reading about another country. 

It was easier to get our world news from Sarita’s, and I liked it there. Sarita gave me a local discount so coffee was half price, only 400 Colones. To further entice me into her establishment she kept a bottle of Baileys behind the counter just for me. Where else in the world do proprietors in a café gladly contribute to your 7:00 a.m. alcohol consumption? 

For a lot of us, Sarita’s was our town center, our water cooler since we didn’t have real jobs. There were five seats out front so the regulars joined me in our stakeout of the dirt road. 

“Oh no, here comes Big Teeth,” Rodney said.

“Ahhh shit, I can’t stand this guy,” Sarita said. “He’s so rude.”

“What’s his real name again? Mike? Carl?” I asked.

“Who the fuck knows? Big Teeth,” Sarita said. Big Teeth pulled up on his motorcycle in a cloud of dust, his German Shepherd running closely behind. He dismounted, took off his helmet, and started up the steps to the café. The dog followed, barking. 

“Jesus, he’s got some nasty choppers,” Surfer Scotty said. “Those things could really do some damage if they got a hold of you.”

“Yeah, and the dog does, too,” I said. 

Big Teeth ordered coffee and came outside. The rest of us just sat there and didn’t say much. He hiked his khakis up to his chest, made some racist comments, and offended a passing girl before getting on his bike and driving away with the dog. 

“He’s always complaining about my muffins and my prices,” Sarita said, smoking a cigarette.

“I like your muffins,” Scotty said.

“We like your muffins, too” Rodney said.

“What about my prices?”

“I like your muffins a whole lot more than your prices,” I said. She pretended to pour coffee on my head. 

Sarita was from Rhode Island, a fiery redhead with the sass to match. Her real name was Sarah, but there were so many Sarah’s in town that I think she opened a café just to differentiate.It was nice to have a fellow east coast ball-buster in town. Every morning I looked forward to being lambasted with insults the moment I walked through her door. 

Where I’m from everyone talks shit, whether it’s puff-chested Italian bravado, mellifluous banter from the hood, or biting Jewish sarcasm. If your friends weren’t talking shit to you then you knew there was a problem. Growing up in New Haven was like being at the Olympic Training Center of shit talking, and I was a prodigy fast-tracked for the gold.

That’s why being a writer is my dream job—I get to talk shit for a living in a semi-socially-acceptable forum where I won’t get beat up or thrown in jail. I can make people laugh and hopefully get paid for it one day. What are the alternatives for me? A used car salesman? A politician? My God, those are some horribly scummy vocations. No, I think I’ll stick to writing. 

Sarita had a first-class yapper on her, too; not quite on my level, but then again, who is? East coast shit talking isn’t meant to be hurtful at all—quite the opposite; we understood that the frequency and viciousness of the verbal attacks actually corresponded with how much we cared for each other. So a typical east coast shit talking session at Sarita’s might have sounded like this (with translation for the rest of you schleps):

I’d walk in.

“Ohhhhh nooooo! There goes my morning,” Sarita would say. (Good morning, kind sir. I hope you are well.)

“Excuse me, I must be in the wrong place. I was looking for a café and this is obviously a shit hole.” (I wish you a splendid day too, fair lass.)

“No, please, come in—you’ll fit right in then. Wow, you look like crap!” (So nice to see you. Did you sleep well?)

She’d pour the Baileys and fresh café into my cup and hand it to me, noticing the t-shirt I was wearing. 

“What’s with you and yellow shirts all the time? You wear one like every day. Do you think you look good in yellow or something?” (I like your shirt. You look good in yellow.)

“Wow, that’s a LOT of lipping you’ve got going on. You’re at about an 11 and we can use you at a 4.” (Why thank you, I appreciate that.) 

“Oh, whatever, Norm. Why do you even come here? No one likes you.” (Thank you for coming. We really like you.)

“Hey, if you prefer, I can leave and never come back.” (I like you too and appreciate your great café.)

“Don’t threaten ME with a good time!” (Don’t threaten me with a good time.)

That was Sarita’s favorite saying: “Don’t threaten MEwith a good time.” 

And so it went, on and on every day, a witty repartee amongst eastside friend-emies suitable for framing. 

Sarita had an apartment near me in Pueblo del Mar. I helped her carry supplies to and from the café because she’d injured her foot. The first time I saw her apartment I was absolutely certain she was running a meth lab. White powder snow-flaked the countertops and it was approximately 187 degrees, even though the ceiling fans were working overtime. Everywhere I looked there were bins, tubes, and beakers containing spices, icing, and white powders of mysterious origin. I estimated the street value of her apartment to be $600,000 U.S. dollars, but she claimed it was just where she did all of her baking. Yeah, right.

She lived there with Jason, her gringo boyfriend. He was a personal chef who didn’t have much work so he sat around the apartment smoking weed and watching Patriots games on his laptop all day. If I had to pinpoint his personal philosophy on life, I’d say that Jason was a follower of “I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuckism.” I respected him for that. We’d sit in front of the café in the afternoons, when he was watching the place for Sarita, and talk about old school punk bands, end-of-the-world conspiracy theories, and whether you’d rather get hit in the face with a lead pipe or a baseball bat—important stuff like that. I liked Jason. He looked a little rough around the edges, and suffered from crippling social anxiety that kept him from hanging out in public a lot, so we had more in common than he might have guessed. 

Jason and Sarita were always on-again, off-again. Sarita would need someone to talk to at the café, or knock on my door to say hi. It’s useless giving relationship advice to anyone, but I did root for them so I just said “yup” and “I hear you” and shook my head in agreement every 14 seconds, secretly wishing she’d brought over some of her famous meth cinnamon rolls. I liked them both but I wanted nothing more than to stay out of their relationship woes, though the human stain always seems to follow me.

Running a business in Tamarindo was a daunting task. Sarita had bills to pay and already had to work twenty hours a day trying to hold it all together. I don’t know how she did it, but it didn’t look like fun. She hired my neighbor’s daughter to help, but that just created another salary to pay. Sarita was always exhausted and stressed, but to her credit she kept up her usual chipper, crappy attitude with us. 

When tourists came into the café, us locals tried to put on a good show and watch what we were saying. The café wasn’t like your neighborhood Starbucks back in the States. Every morning, tourists poked their well-shampooed and conditioned heads inside and asked for a vente caramel Macchiato or inquired if she served Frappachinos. No matter what they ordered we all just pointed to the big metal coffee pot sitting on the counter. We had coffee or more coffee—drink it and don’t complain. 

I think I speak for everyone who thinks a “barista” is just a dude who makes coffee when I say that the whole Starbucks thing has gotten a little out of control. It’s to the point that the corporate coffee culture is gentrifying the last place I’d ever expect—the hood. 

Before I left Sacramento, I was sitting in a Starbucks one afternoon on Stockton Blvd. For those of you who aren’t familiar with that particular street, it rivals any avenue ‘cross the country named “Martin Luther King Jr.” or “John F. Kennedy” as ghetto-fabulous. So I was just sitting there, chilling, and this thug walks in with a gangsta limp—gold teeth, hoodie, jeans sagging. I figured he was there to rob the place, which was perfectly fine with me, but instead he walked right past the line of customers up to the register, leaned his tattooed forearms on the counter and said: 

“Yeah, like, ya know what I mean, yo yo—hook me up with some of dat…grande triple shot half-whip vanilla soy decaf mocha. Please.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I wanted to shake him by his Sean Jean shirt and scream, “Really G?! Come onnnnnn, boo boo, you gonna go out like THAT?! That’s not a coffee you just ordered—that’s a Prince song!” 

Well, I can promise you that you wouldn’t find any of that same opulence, pretension, or insect-free cleanliness at Sarita’s! But alas, she did need to cater to the tourists because us deadbeat locals weren’t enough to make a living off. So we helped her out any way we could, even inviting them to sit down with us. You know me by now, I HEART Tourists. I was more than happy to answer any questions they might have…about sharks. 

The surf posers came right off the plane with legs so white they were unsuitable for public viewing, wearing Bob Marley t-shirts they’d just bought at Target, holding short boards they could never ride. They’d come into Sarita’s for a quick shot of java on their way to the beach. Once they saw Surfer Scotty, Salty Dog Rodney, and me sitting outside, they’d figure it was a good time to ask some locals a few of questions. Which beach was best for surfing? When was high tide? What was a good place to buy a new rash guard? But most of all, they wanted to know about sharks before they jumped into the ocean. 

“So, fellas, are there any sharks in the water down here? I mean, is it safe?”

“Oh yeah, perfectly safe. Nothing ever happens,” I’d say.

“For sure, you’re fine in the water. No worries,” Surfer Scotty said.

“Yup, 100%,” I said.

“110%!” Scotty chimed in.

“Whewww! Okay, cool. I was a little worried because I’ve never been in the Pacific before and before I left it was Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.”

“Well…except for that guy last summer,” I said. “Right, Scotty, remember him?”

“Oh yeah, of course. Except for the guy.”

“Guy? Guy?! What guy? What happened? What happened last summer with the guy?”

“No one knows for sure,” I said. “He was a local, a good surfer, too, out at Playa Grande with a couple of his friends. He got bitten by a shark and died. Does that about cover it, Scotty?”

“Yeah, but some say it was a crocodile. Not sure. But something definitely bit him on the leg and he died.”

“You’re not kidding?” the tourist said, looking over his shoulder to make sure his better half wasn’t listening. “We Googled it but nothing like that came up. Please don’t tell my wife—she wanted to go to Amish country, instead.”

“Ohhh, you have to be careful with those Amish, too,” I said. “They’re sneaky bastards once they get ahold of you.” 

“But, to be fair, he bled to death because they took forever getting him to the hospital,” Scotty said. “He was only 200 meters away from the medical clinic but instead of putting him on a boat across the estuary they called a taxi. It took 45 minutes to show up and then they drove around for a while.”

“Jesus, that’s awful. Please—I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“Oh yeah, so listen to this,” I said. “I heard he bled out in the back of the taxi in a gas station parking lot across the street from the clinic.”

“Big shark, too, from what his friends said. Ripped half his leg off. And once they get a taste for human blood, it’s just a matter of time,” Scotty laughed.

“Ughhhh, oh my God!”

“Hey—watch out, you’re spilling coffee on my flip flop,” I said. “But really, don’t worry about it, buddy. It’s perfectly safe and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Perfectly fine! Never better!” Scotty said. “But just remember if you DO get bitten by a shark, or a crocodile, just don’t call a taxi! Hahahaha.” 

“Hahahaha, good point, Scotty!”

Bob Marley suddenly lost his appetite and left half of his banana bread on his chair for the ants to swarm. He looked a little green when he left, carrying that surfboard like a tombstone, heading in the opposite direction from the beach. Odds were that they’d spend the rest of their vacation in the hotel pool. 

The moment the tourists were out of earshot we started up our shit talking session right where we’d left off. Game on. From our chairs in front of Sarita’s we had a perfect vantage point to watch people in town pass by. It was a great way of ascertaining everyone’s personal business each morning, the perfect forum to judge without amnesty. It was immature, irresponsible, and borderline cruel, but hey, what can I say—you’d do it, too. 

Big Chuck, the jolly personal chef, walked by. I liked Chuck—he was always really cool to talk to as he smoked bud, wading in the pool at our apartment.

“Didn’t he and Angela break up? She’s been a hot mess at the bars every night.” 

“I don’t know. I think they keep making up and breaking up.”

“That’s too bad, I like Big Chuck.”

“It’s too bad for her. I heard she borrowed money from Longboard Sarah and never paid her back.” 

My big-boobed alcoholic neighbor walked by, squinting against the sun. She wore the same dress as the night before and carried her high heels. She crossed the street before she passed us in a feeble attempt to evade notice. 

“Hiiiiii there! How are you? Did you have a rough night?” we called out. She walked faster. 

“You should have seen her at the barbecue the other night. She was sloshed! I think she hooked up with Grant.” 

“Your friend Gringo Grant? I thought she was a lesbian?”

“Your mom’s a lesbian.”

“Yeah, well, your dad is a lesbian.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” We all took a timeout, and sipped our coffee.

“Didn’t Grant’s apartment get broken into? He lives in Langosta with that tall guy who plays online poker, right?”

“Yeah, while they were away doing their border shuffle someone broke in and cleaned ‘em out: TV, laptop, nice camera—they got it all.”

“Damn, that sucks. Who was it? A Critter?”

“Well, I’m not supposed to say anything, so you didn’t hear it from me, but Grant thinks it was Tony Touch.”

“Who’s that? The crack head guy dating the waitress from Le Beach Club?”

“Yeah he works at Blue Turtle tours. I’m pretty sure he’s clean these days, or at least off that shit.” 

“I heard he owned a gun.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I heard he beat her up.”

I didn’t say anything.

Lena drove by in her black Mercedes. I ducked down, but she didn’t see me anyways because she was on her cellphone. I’d been dodging her for months and had no desire to deal with her ever again. 

“Look at that one. Someone told me that she married a rich old gringo years back and took him for all of he was worth. That’s how she got her money.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. Chris said she ripped him off in a real estate deal and stole five acres of his land.”

“I guess they’re going bankrupt on those condos he was building.”

“Oh, speaking of bankrupt…guess what I heard yesterday...”

It went on and on, all morning, talking about who was on a bender and who ripped someone off and, who was acting like a prick, and where everyone was trying to put their pricks. 

“Man, I saw Nayla, the yoga teacher/Spanish teacher/personal chef yelling at someone outside the market yesterday. She was really losing her shit.”

“Yeah, I think she was yelling at Mack White. I heard he was sloppy drunk the other night and grabbed her ass, and she slapped him.”

“He was at Casa Crack last week—I saw him walking out of that Dominican girl’s apartment.”

“Really? And what were you doing at Casa Crack?”

“Never mind.”

Someone was going crazy. Someone else was pregnant. This one had a venereal disease, that one was broke and selling their surfboard to buy a ticket back to the States. Nothing was out of bounds and we didn’t have to worry about being politically correct. That was Sarita’s Café, the best source of information Tamarindo, excuse me—TamaRUMOR—had to offer.

“There are rumors about you, too, you know,” Sarita said to me one day.

“What? Are you serious? Like what?” I said.

“I heard that you used to be in the army, but now you’re ultra-religious and don’t even curse.”

“What the fuck? Who the hell said that?”

“You know, people talk. That’s just the word around town,” Sarita said.

“Jesus Christ, that’s crazy talk! How do these rumors even get started? People should be more responsible with what they say.”

Sarita, Rodney, and Scotty shook their heads in agreement and we looked out at the road. The stray dog rose from the dirt, yawned, and started dragging what was left of the iguana down the road. 

“Sure is hot today,” Rodney said. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

An excerpt from the chapter "The Streets are Paved with Honey," from the book South of Normal, due out March 15, 2013.

The police station in Tamarindo used to be in town, on the hill toward Lookout Point, but it was donated land so years ago the owner kicked them out. They moved to a one-room station in a private home outside of town, but that led to one small problem—they didn’t have any vehicles. When the police were needed in Tamarindo they had to hitchhike into town. They had guns but no one had money to buy ammunition.

As the town grew a real police force was needed to protect the tourists, so between private donations and municipal funding they managed to put enough together to buy the police force its first car. What a proud moment indeed, to have a shiny new vehicle for the police, but there was one glitch: cars need gasoline. The closest gas station was in Bellin, 20 km away, and petrol was over $6.00 a gallon. So the cops started a fuel fund by collecting donations from local restaurants and hotels. When they kicked in enough to buy a tank of gas the police force were mobile, agile, and hostile once again…at least until they got down to “E.”

By the time I got there they’d graduated to motorcycles and bulletproof vests. I saw police in town sometimes, when it was sunny out but not too hot and definitely not raining, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., except during siesta time or on the weekends. They’d park in the shade of the palm trees in the roundabout and hang out. Thank God they were serious about stopping all of the crimes that occurred under those conditions. But they sure put on a good show of it every time you drove by the station, congregating in front for flag raisings at 6:00 a.m. and lowerings at 6:00 p.m. like clockwork. Between all the fundraising and the flag raisings, they appeared to be more of a Girl Scout troop than a police force. You might as well have put them in little brown skirts and unleashed them on the good citizens of Tama with boxes of Thin Mints. 

They were such a joke that one time the cops actually got robbed at gunpoint by bandidos. Robbing the cops! I’d love to see how that went down:

“Hey, you!  Freeze!” The policeman says, pulling his gun.

“Whoaa cabron!  No, you freeze!” The bandido says, pulling his gun, too.

“Mae, I’m serious, now!  Freeze or I’ll shoot!  Don’t you see my gun?!” the policeman says. 

“Well…I’ve got a gun, too!” the bandido says.

“This is your last warning and then I’m going to shoot!  Don’t try me!”  

“Ha!  If you were really going to shoot you already would have.  You probably don’t even have bullets in your gun.”  

“Yes I do!” The policeman says.

“Then shoot.”  

(Pause.)

“Yes I do!” The policeman says.

“Ha!  Ok, that’s it.  Hand over your gun, now!”  The bandido says.  The policeman hands his gun over to the bandido with a look on his face like he just drank sour milk. “Now, hands UP!”

The policeman puts his hands up.  

“Wait a second, do you even have bullets in your gun?” The policeman asks.

“Of course I do!”

“Show me!” the policeman says.  

“Shut up!  Or I’ll shoot!” The bandido says.

“Liar!  You don’t have bullets, either!  I knew it!”

“Well…so what?  Neither did you!”

“Enough of this - hands up!” the policeman says. “Give me your gun or you’re under arrest!”  The bandido puts his hands up.  

“Be careful threatening me, cabron!” the bandido says. “If I had a bullet right now I’d shoot you!”

“Well, if I had a bullet right now I’d shoot you in your FACE!” the policeman says.

“Yeah?  Well I’m going to buy a bullet next week and come looking for you!” the bandido says.

“Next week?!   Unlikely, puta!  Everyone knows you can’t afford a bullet!  You can’t even afford the bus to Liberia!”

“Liberia?  Is that where you buy your bullets?  They’re pretty expensive there, no?” the bandido asks.

“Yes, it's definitely true.  Way too expensive.”

“I find they’re usually on sale up in Santa Cruz.”  

“Santa Cruz?  Really?  I’ll try that next time, thanks,” the policeman says.  “There’s a little frozen yogurt shop I just adore up there, too.”

“Wait, you mean Heladeria Ricardo?  Ohhh I just love that place!” the bandido says.  “I always get the strawb…”

“Strawberry!” the policeman says at the same time.  “Hahahahaha.”

“Hahahahahaha.”

(They just stand there and look at each other.)  

“Sooo…what do we do now?” The bandido asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think it would be all right if we put our hands down, at least?”

“Yeah, that would be okay, I think,” the policeman says.

They both put their arms down. 

“Whewww…my arms were getting tired. So…how about you give me my gun back and just keep yours?”  The bandido asks.

“Well…”

“Come on…it’s hot out here, and it’s almost lunch time. “

“All right, I guess that’s okay,” the policeman says.  “Here you go.”

“Thanks.  Wait…no, that one’s yours.”

“Oh, yeah. Here.”  

“Great, gracias,” the bandido says. “Well…I guess I’ll just go now?” 

“Yeah, me too.” 

“I’ll see you next week, amigo.”  

“You too, hermano.  Pura vida,” the policeman says.  “And enjoy the strawberry at…”

“Ricardos!” they say at the same time.

“Hahahahaha.”
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