Tonight, right after the gym, I had to do a quick run to the store. As I was walking out back my car from the store I saw… I didn’t quite make out whether the were teenagers or adults, I just saw bodies (there’s almost no illumination and the parking lot was empty) walking towards me. So, I get in the car and the first thing I did was to lock it. This is something I never do. My car doesn’t lock by itself automatically like most modern cars, you have to manually push the button to lock it. I never do this, not here, and by here I mean since I live in Boise, Idaho. This is something I would have done if I was in living down in Puerto Rico and even if nobody was around. Which made start thinking about the conversation I had with Greg on his show …and you are? If living in Puerto Rico sort of shaped who I am here, or something like that.
In Puerto Rico I remember my guard was always on high alert. You never know what’s gonna happen, you need to at least try to be on all your five senses. You never leave your car unlocked or your house, never ever leave anything personal unattended, that kind of stuff. Even something simple as been courteous to others. At least from the time I come from. You never say hi to a stranger, to people you don’t know, you trust no one. I am not sure how things are now and I hope they are much better but back in my days it was dry and a little rough.
When I moved to the states, to Boise, I still had some of that malice, some of that distrust and awareness at first. Which of course after the years it has definitely changed. For example, I the first time someone random, someone I didn’t know said to me “how’s it going!?” or may favorite “howdy!”, it was such a foreign thing to me! Accepting that people can be nice to you even if they don’t know you was somewhat hard to get used to.
Anyway, after all this years living here I feel like I am “less Puerto Rican”, on the sense that have let down my guard a bit — lost some of that malice. You have no idea how many times we have slept with the front or the back door unlocked (by mistake of course), the garage opened or how many times I have left my car unlocked and trust that nothing will go wrong 😅.
I don’t know, it’s one of those things that I rarely think about these days, except for tonight.
