My grandson, Ayden, was a tiny three-months when we took him and his parents to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. His big, brown eyes stole my heart and, while Lee and I were out doing errands in the not-so-nice-town of Limon, I could not help but buy my little Squeegy a gift.
It was a stuffed lion. The super soft, I-can't-stop-touching-it-even-though-I-am-an-adult kind of lion.
We stuffed him in the big bag they gave us at the store, but he just wouldn’t stay in there.
Now, keep in mind that doing errands in Limon means doing a lot of walking. Limon is the biggest port town in Costa Rica and the entire thing is the color grey. It smells like fuel. It isn't exactly safe. (And for those of you who know me, you know I go all kinds of crazy places. So if I say something isn't very safe, well....) The streets are always very busy. People walk every which way. Loud music blares from every shoe store and pharmacy. Street food is available on most every street corner—greasy fried empanadas, blackened and spicy meat on a stick, salty fried green bananas that look like thick potato chips, and batidos—fresh fruit smoothies that come made with water or milk and suck you in with flavors like pineapple, mango, passionfruit, guanabana, or watermelon.
So we navigated the busy streets and tried to keep Lion in the bag.
He poked his head out when we went to the Western Union window to pick up cash. We'd been there three times that morning already. We were trying to get details sorted out so we could receive a wire from home. So, there we were again, waiting in another long line. Lion wasn't very patient and kept sticking his head out of the bag to see if we were there yet and the lady behind the counter let us come up to the window early when she saw how anxious he was.
He insisted on having his own chair when we stopped to get lunch at a busy restaurant that served fried chicken, beans and rice, and salad. He wanted us to stop at the place across the street that served friend chicken, beans and rice, and salad, but he didn't get his way. So, even though he sat up nicely in his plastic chair, Lion refused to eat.
He peed on a police man.
I admit, it wasn't the best place to pee. But when Lion saw the uniform, it triggered something in his lower regions and he just had to sneak up behind the man in blue, lift his super-soft, stuffed leg and relieve himself.
An older gentleman was sitting in a wheelchair nearby, his body slumped as if it wasn't working properly. His hands were twisted and his head hung at an odd angle as if it were too heavy to hold up properly. The expression on his face was frozen as if it just wasn't able to change properly.
He must have caught Lion's inappropriate behavior out of the corner of his eye.
Slowly, the old man lifted his head. His body straightened as if it were waking up after a hundred-year nap. A silent, open-mouthed smile slowly spread across his face. His eyes lit up as if it were the 4th of July and he was six and seeing fireworks for the first time, and he laughed from the belly up. He laughed and laughed. And as we dragged lion away from the unsuspecting, now damp police man, the old man kept laughing. In fact, when we looked back a block later, he was still laughing. It was as if Rip Van Winkle had awakened from his slumber and was laughing all the lost laughs of the last hundred years.
Lion did stop misbehaving and took a nice nap while we finished running around town getting the rest of our errands done. Later that evening we introduced him to his new owner, my three-month-old, wide-eyed, blonde-haired grandson. Lion lay nicely on the floor and let Ayden pull on his ears and drool on him.
What a nice Lion.