CARRUMBA, GIVE ME THE DAMN TOOL!

Yesterday was the big day. The day Sleepys delivered the new bed to my home. Of course they were running late and didn’t arrive until hours after they should have. They told me that the delivery would be between the hours of 8 and 12 noon, but it was closer to 8 and midnight.

The bed arrives as three Mexicans or Hispanics jump off their truck and start opening up the back doors. They immediately start unloading the truck and little children and women are jumping out, and bring in the new bed, all the while looking over their shoulders! I try to explain to them they must take out the old bed first, since it isn’t the largest room in the house. No Comprende! Aye, aye aye!!

So they climb the steps with two heavy beds under their ponchos and struggle as they juggle and twist, dancing and stepping, looking not to bump into walls and furniture, all the while looking over their shoulders. They see what I’m talking about and sheepishly place the new beds into the hallway, blocking the stairs. They stand the old bed against the TV! I’m starting to get a little unsettled.

Zapata opens up the bag of nuts and bolts, while el Gato, (he did all the bending and twisting) took all the heavy pieces of bed frame and started to assemble, all the while looking over his shoulder. El Cabbeza Loco assists while periodically answering his cell phone that rang to the tune of “La Cucaracha”, all the while looking over his shoulder.

Zapata now decides to assist in the assembly of the bed frame. He pulls out this bracket and they all start conferring in Espanol, rattling off in low tones and rapid fashion what sounds to be a dilemma. What do we do with these strange brackets amigos??? All the while looking over their shoulders, they try.

They fiddle and position, referring to the assembly instructions, (which by the way did NOT come in both English and Spanish!)
They can’t figure it out, after 20 minutes! I’m really starting to loose my patience.

I tap on Zapata’s shoulder, he jumps, all the while looking over his shoulder. I take the instructions and tool, look at them and show El Cabbeza Loco how to do it, for not only are they on the wrong side of the border, they are on the wrong side of the bed, and are trying to fit the headboard brackets to the foot of the bed!

Immediately they all jump in and start to assemble. La Cucaracha starts to play again on the cell phone, and while El Cabbeza Loco does a Mexican hat dance around the room trying to answer, El Gato is checking for either the U.S. Border Patrol or the U.S. Dep’t of Immigration and Naturalization to see if they are looking for him. Zapata hands me the remote to operate the levels for the bed to raise the head or foot of the bed. He says: “Senor, see if it works.”

I open the remote to see if there are batteries, (there are) and position them so the remote works. I test the bed: nada! Nunca, nothing! NOTHING!! It doesn’t work. El Gato jumps under the bed, I tell them in my most diplomatic voice: You gotta program it. Zapata grabs the book and starts to do the work of three men, namely: Mo. Larry and Curley. He turns to the page on how to program a dual two remote bed, but we are a single remote. I instruct El Cabbeza Loco to plug in the bed, and Zapata to give me the book so I can program the remote.

I program the remote from the correct page and it works! I think to myself: “Maybe they should apply for unemployment and an English lesson to go with the new American first language, Spanish.