Mom and the Mambo Mopping INCIDENT
Feb 1, 2023 12:00:50 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Feb 1, 2023 12:00:50 GMT -5
Mother mopping and mambo.
As human beings, all of us have our propensities and our weaknesses. For some, it might be food which could endanger their health via obesity. For others, it can be alcohol which slowly damages their liver leading to a premature death. For still others, it might be the irresistible urge to take life-endangering risks via mountain climbing. But for my mother, it was her inexorable need to dance.
It always baffled me, since although I am a musician, I am totally averse to dancing. One reason is that I am shy and don’t like to draw attention to myself. The other is that I tend to see it as a rather illogical activity. After all, why are the people moving their bodies just because a certain sound is going on?
I sometimes pondered how non-dancing aliens might see us if they beheld us moving that way in response to sound. I imagined them puzzled and unable to come up with a satisfying explanation. So the fervid, and seemingly irresistible urge to go dancing every weekend, or to suddenly break out dancing to a Rumba or a Mambo, just seemed weird to me.
“You don’t know what you are missing!” my mother would say.
“Dancing is one of the greatest pleasures a human being can experience! I hear a little bit of music, and my legs start go in all directions all by themselves. I can barely control them.”
Still I remained unconvinced, and figured that for some people it might be, but never for me. The most I ever attempted to dance were Boleros, a very slow dance with extremely minimal foot-movement and lots of embracing. Even then I had trouble.
Now, dancing isn’t usually associated with danger. People dance all the time, and unless the entire floor collapses in a heap taking all dancers with it, as it did in Israel during a wedding one time, or unless a fight breaks out, or unless one gets elbowed in the face by another careless dancer, or else decides to dance on ice or an extremely slippery floor, there is no problem.
The problem is that we humans tend to create problems when none should be present. For example, my mother used to wear these extremely long high-heeled shoes which she spent weeks learning to walk on without breaking an ankle. You know, the ones that are extremely tilted and are propped up by this tiny heel? Well, she became so skilled in dancing with those, that it became second-nature. She’d Merengue, mambo, cha cha, and usually out-danced younger women at the party. It was something she was very proud of, and would be constantly boast about.
Well, it just so happened that my father had invited this fellow worker to dinner, and the apartment had not been mopped yet. So what does my mother do? She puts on high heels in order to look elegant and simultaneously begins waxing the floor. But that wasn’t suffice. She needed to put on a long-play record by the then-famous Cuban Mambo king Perez Prado, who’s signature expression during performances was to pause the music and yell “Dilo!” which translated means “Say it!”. It really didn’t sound like Dilo! In the fervid heat of the performance, it sounded more like a shouted grunting of
“Ugh!”
Well, she put on the record and began mopping while dancing on high heels. My father quietly observed for a while, and then began shaking his head in silent disapproval.
“You are applying wax to that floor while wearing high heels, and dancing at the same time?” he finally uttered.
“Yes, that is exactly what I am doing. So?”
“So? Hay virgen! You are going to slip and fall, that’s the so! In what human mind does it occur to place wax on the floor and then begin dancing on it in high heels?”
“Well, if I can’t dance while I am mopping, then you will have to mop it yourself because I need something to take my mind off the mopping.”
“So you can’t wait? Why don’t you dance after the floor is dried?”
“This is the way I am going to do it, and ya!”
“Okayy! But you can’t say I didn’t tell you-right? I told you!”
“Oh come on chico! Life has to be lived! Los muertos para el hoyo y los vivos para el pimpoyo” [The dead to the pit and the living to activity!”] After that declaration, she continued dancing even more effusively than before, elbows and knees in perfect syncopation with the throbbing, mambo-beat, and the brief pause as Perez Prado grunted: "Dilo!"
“There he is! He just arrived!" my father said while looking out the eleventh-floor window down at the housing project's parking lot. He had described me to his co-worker as being only eight years old in order to appear more youthful. Unfortunately, I was eleven and looked eleven. So he didn’t want his co-worker friend to see me.
“Go to your room and stay there and don’t come out no matter what until he is gone?” he told me. Of course I felt pretty bad about that since the visit might last maybe two hours. But off I went to my room while the mopping was being finished. The floor was still wet when the guest arrived at our door.
“Hey, we were expecting you! Come in come in!” I heard my father say. That was followed by my mother’s welcoming comments. The Mambo music was still blaring. Then I heard footsteps in the apartment hallway approaching my bedroom. I heard Perez Prado yell “Dilo!” and suddenly: BALLLAAAAM! A tremendous explosion as if from a double-barreled shotgun in the hallway right in front of my bedroom door.
True, they had told me not to show my face no matter what, but this was just too much, and I opened the door to see what the hell was going on.
Well, there, flat on her back, all dressed up in a fancy black dress adorned with sparklers, wearing her black, high-heels shoes, and with the mop lying next to her, was my mom. She had the back of one hand on her forehead, and the other on her hip as if posing to look elegant. Of course the grimace of agony on her face made the pose look unconvincing..
A moment later my father and the guest had rushed to her side.
“Que Paso?" What happened my father said. The guest took one suspicious look at me and asked:
“Is this your son?”
“Oh yes this is my son.” my father responded sheepishly.
“He doesn’t look eight years old!”
“Oh that’s because he is big for his age!”
“Oh really?” the visitor said suspiciously.
"Oh I was the same when I was a kid, big for my age."
“Would you have the decency to help me to my feet?!” my mother groaned with a forced smile still resembling a grimace.
“I told you that you were going to fall if you danced on a waxed floor with those shoes." my father responded with my mom still in the same pose on the floor.
"Didn’t I tell you-eh? But you never listen until your cabeza hits the laja. [ Until your head hits the flat slab of the stone].
“Can we talk about this later? Right now I just want a helping hand to get up!” she said with a forced patience.
“Are you OK?” my father finally said.
“You ask me if I’m OK after all that time? I need to go to the hospital.”
“Well sorry about all this” but I have to take her to the hospital,” he very apologetically told the guest. Maybe we can get together some other time.”
The man left and that’s when all hades broke loose!
“How dare you apologize to him for having to take me to the hospital! What’s more important my health, or his visit?”
“No I didn‘t mean--”
“No you never mean anything, do you Hipolito? Just like you didn’t mean leaving me flat on my back on the floor while you explained how old Nelson is, right? Looking younger than you are, is far more important to you than me. Right?"
Unable to offer a viable explanation for his comportment, my father continued with:
“I told you not to dance on that floor! How many times did I tell you that?”
"I wasn’t dancing when I fell!”
“ Oh! No! No! No! Señorita! I saw you taking some mambo- steps on that slippery hallway floor on the way to our bedroom before you fell!”
“A lo hecho pecho! What’s done is done!” she responded.
With that they went to the hospital ER, and she was diagnosed with a bruised coccyx. Never again did she dare to dance on a waxed, wet floor. However, on a dry floor? On a dry floor she was still the rage of the party.