Pisado

"Pisa'o Pisa'o," say the kids as they play hackey in the hallway and I am transported back in time to just less than three years ago when first I heard that word. In Guatemala, pisa'o was a vulgar word one of my colleagues at Ajb'atz' Enlace Quiche convinced me to say to a female coworker.

I see this mural every day in the hallway that leads to my door.
It reads "It's good to have patience."

Stumbling out into the unlit, cavelike passage that connects two other hallways in my apartment building, I find my adolescent next door neighbor and a playmate I don't recognize. When I enquire as to the meaning of pisa'o one jabs his finger enthusiastically toward the other as he plays, explaining, "Tu sabes, aquí hay mucho pisa'o." I surmise it has something to do with getting big air with the hackey sack.

Cartoon, super-hero Jesus greets me at the bottom of the stairs every morning.

After my first brush with the word, I never really much cared to know what it meant. I just felt annoyed by it. What Mikey actually told me to say to her was "peace out" because it sounded like saying I was saying the same thing. When I look in the dictionary today, I find a verb, pisar, the past participle of which would be pisado; almost certainly the word they are using if they are speaking Spanish. It means "to step on, to tread on, to mash".

Inside the "cage" of metal bars downstairs. It says, "The fruit of the spirit is..." The fruits
include  "Peace," "Happiness," "Love," "Self-Control," "Faith," "Patience,"
"Meekness," "Goodness," "Kindness"  

Tonight it's sticky and hot without electricity to run my fan. Even when I'm not standing over my gas stove, my back runs with sweat. Leaving my curtains completely open is usually a forgone conclusion on nights like this, but unfortunately this time the street lamp blaring into my room would display my naked bod for the world to see. You see, the power outage this time was quite avoidable. Pablo just ran out of time before paying this month's electrical bill.