The Coffee Stare

The infamous coffee stare incident easily made its way onto the list and has remained there with confidence ever since. The Webers had returned to Mexico for Spring Break once again, a place where all of us, Tammy being the exception, seem to fit in perfectly. This is not to say that she is not liked by the people. On the contrary, they all want to be her best friend; I assume this is because she is not your run of the mill Gringo. She will try her hardest, to little avail, to speak the language of the people, making sure to be friendly, asking all of them, "Como 'Sta?"
On this particular trip, eldest sister Amy joined us, bringing our ranks up to five, and it was our first stay in what Tammy calls "The El Tesoro." For those of you who aren't Spanish-inclined, that translates roughly into "The The Treasure." I will, however, give her credit for so smoothly befriending the hotel manager Ceasar (his name in Tammy-Spanish is "Sessarr") and getting us moved from our lame hotel room on the 13th floor into a pool-front villa. It appeared that this would be one of our best Mexican adventures thus far.
A few days into our trip, while on the beach, we happen across Angelo. Angelo has since earned himself a place on our list of crazy people that provide lots of entertainment. He is enthralled by our family and, after hearing that we are "true Tejanos" wants to hear all about our ranch and how many cows we have. We try several times to explain to him that we live in a house, and only see cows on our milk cartons, but he isn't buying it--he seems to think we are "pulling a trick" on him. After about three hours of painful, poorly translated small talk, we agree to take a fishing trip on Angelo's boat the next morning.
I am awoken by my alarm at 6:00 am and I am not happy about it. The rest of the family seems to be in agreement, Mom especially, who is running around throwing things into her massive basket that seems to get heavier every day we are there. The basket contains things we will need, things we might need, and things we will probably never need but just in case! We stop in the lobby of the hotel for last minute bathroom usage and coffee. And it begins.
The five of us shove ourselves into a Mexican taxi--take your average compact car and half it for the approximate size of these cars. Amy, Mom and I are in the backseat, McCall sits on Mom's lap bent over like a hunchback. I am miserable, but upon seeing McCall, say nothing. Somehow, Dad ends up in the front seat with plenty of space and is chatting it up with the cab driver. We drive on the edge of a mountain for about twenty minutes and at one point Mom's coffee is spilled down her shirt. She is not happy.
By the time we arrive at the dock to meet Angelo, I am concerned that we might be permanantly disfigured from the ways in which we've been sitting--excluding Dad of course. When we wedge out of the car Angelo is there waiting, all five of his teeth proudly displayed in a lovely smile. The first thing he notices, to my mother's utter horror, is the coffee down the front of her white tank top. "Tammy, are you hungover?" Mentally, I put Angelo atop my Idiot List. Meanwhile Tammy has moved from not happy to moderately annoyed. As she refills her coffee cup on the dock I assure her that she does not look hungover. We follow Angelo down the dock until we reach his boat, in which a tiny Mexican is scrambling around, preparing for takeoff. His name is Emilio and the boat belongs to him, not Angelo. In fact, Angelo will be leaving as soon as we are on our way. This is highly contradictory compared to what we were told on the beach, but we let it slide. In a moment of sheer stupidity, we decide that Tammy will board the boat first. The boat is several feet below the dock, so she will have to step down onto a seat and then to the floor from there. She consideres for a moment how she will step down that far; should she sit on the dock? Or just step quickly? She decides on the latter and begins her descent. Her foot hits the seat, leaving her with one foot down in the boat and one still up on the dock. At this moment a large swell comes up underneathe the boat, shifting it. The seat cushion moves, and Tammy flails head first in the boat. It is at this point in time that I notice she is still holding her cup of coffee in her right hand. The coffee raises up as she falls and shortly after douses her in the face. We all gasp and there is silence as we stare wide eyed at her on the floor of the boat covered in coffee. No one is sure what to do and this moment goes by extrememly slowly. She gets to her feet and turns around. There it is. The Coffee Stare. Her bangs are soaked in coffee and hang down in points on either side of her face, like wet devil horns. Her shoulders are tensed and hunched, also covered in coffee. She stares at us, her face a mixture of disbelief and rage. She is pissed. I am laughing so hard that I must sit down on the dock to avoid falling overboard.
At first Mom insisted that she wasn't going anywhere until she was able to take a shower, but we conviced her that there was no shower nearby and we had all gotten up and come out here so we might as well take the trip. McCall and I were first to fish and as I looked back Mom was leaned over the side of the boat splashing saltwater in her hair to try and get rid of the caffeine devil look.
The rest of the trip seemed uneventful after our morning, though we caught several fish that were cooked for us on an island where we snorkled and tanned. It turned out to be a fantastic trip. Later that night we played cards back in the villa and continued to wail in laughter at my mother's expense. By this time she had officially moved on and declared the moment funny, which meant that we were allowed to laugh, and laugh we did.
Several years have gone by, and our eyes still water at the thought of my mother turning around in Emilio's boat, giving us a look that nearly succeeded in killing us all. There is no question in my mind as to why the Mexicans love Tammy. Who doesn't?