Comemoscas

There's a girl at my work who always walks around with her mouth open. It makes her appear really slow and dim-witted.

Earlier today I was daydreaming about what it would be like to throw a piece of popcorn into her mouth as she walked by, or maybe how funny it would be to flick a booger into her mouth before she even realized what was happening. I mean, really, when you walk around with your mouth wide open, you're just asking for it.

This girl reminded me of a character from a book I read about five years ago. Back at that time I embarked on a solo backpacking journey up the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Before leaving on my trek, I went to a bookstore in San Jose to pick-up a couple books, anticipating the need for nighttime entertainment in the many sleepy towns along the way. One of the books that I picked-up was "Lituma en los Andes", written in Spanish, by Mario Vargas Llosa. About twelve pages into the second chapter, the author describes one of the characters in this way:

"Desde nino a Pedrito Tinoco le habian dicho alunado, opa, ido, bobo, y, como siempre andaba con la boca abierta, comemoscas."

"From the time he was a boy, they had called Pedrito Tinoco half-wit, moron, dummy, simpleton, and since his mouth always hung open, they called him flycatcher, too."

Quite coincidentally, after I had returned stateside after four months in Central America, my father gave me a book he had just finished reading. It was called "Death in the Andes" by Mario Vargas Llosa; yup, you guessed it, the English translation of the book I had read during my pilgrimage up la costa pacifica. Reading the English version, I once again revisited this memorable character: Comemoscas. Just as I do now, day in and day out, at my job, every single time I see this dumb-looking girl with her mouth wide open all the time. <flick!>