I’m an odd person. You could be forgiven if you said I was defective. Please note that the previous sentence was written using passive voice. If you call me defective in plain, Anglo Saxon declarative sentences, well, it’s hard to pick up your teeth with a broken arm, fella. I know, I’ve had to do it.

Anyway, enough about hockey. I don’t act or think exactly like most other people do. It’s not obvious that I don’t, but I don’t. I’m a Donald Sutherland pod person. I look about the same, but then I get on WordPress and hiss and point at you.

I’ve said it many times here, but it’s not my fault I notice things. You can list all my other faults if you like, and I won’t take umbrage. You know, if you have ten or twelve years and can type fast. I have taken umbrage in my past life, but I’ve always put it back on the shelf before the interpersonal store detective collared me.

So here I am in Merida, Mexico. I know I’m supposed to do tourist things. I do, occasionally. But my heart’s not generally in it. I’m not going to make YorubaTube videos depicting me and my wife shoveling food into our faces. The food’s good here — way better than good, it’s excellent, superb. Case closed.

But back in the cobwebbed recesses of snakepit I call a mind, stuff is moiling all the time. I’m curious about things no other extranjeros ever ask about, or include in their videos and search-engine-optimized drivel. I like to go to different places, like, say, Mexico, and see how everything works there. I don’t want to go to fourteen tourist trap restaurants and film myself eating. I want to know where the trash goes.

Honestly, I do. These are the sorts of questions that fascinate me.

Q: Where does the water in the taps come from? A: Not sure. Occasionally, it doesn’t.

Q: Where does the, um, processed food in the toilet go when I flush? A: No one knows. And occasionally it doesn’t. Then you have to move.

Q: Where did the iguana in my courtyard go? A: Wherever he wants. Who’s going to stop him?

Q: How are they building houses in 100F heat with nothing but a bucket of trowels? A: They’re Mexican

Q: Hey, landlord, what do we do with our trash? A: [laughter] You just put it outside on the sidewalk after 4 PM. It will not be there tomorrow morning.

Whoah, wait a minute there. This is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, in a Hefty steel sack. Are there trash fairies? [please, no cheap jokes about the drag bar over the back wall] Do the wandering iguanas eat it all while we slumber? What gives?

So we’ve been doing it for three weeks now. The trash fairies come, but we never hear them, or see them, or meet anyone who can tell us exactly how it works. But last night, wonder of wonders, we solved the mystery that would make Agatha Christie blush, and hold her nose. We saw the trash fairies. Up close. Personal.

My wife and  I are adapting to the clime. It’s as hot as a demon’s George Foreman grill every day. Smarter people than us (every Mexican) stay in all day and wait for the relative cool of the evening to wander about. I’m not including working people in this. They bustle early and late, and many ride to work on buses without air conditioning. I’d salute them, but that would reveal the giant sweat stain under my arm.

So the sun was setting. The narrow streets lined with painstakingly assembled skipping stone and mortar houses made miniature canyons to shade us from its last rays. Buses and little cars and scooters went rollicking down the calles, set free from the heavier traffic of the workday world. Young couples (and us) strolled hand in hand on the way to a dinner date, or a walk in the park in the moderated air of the evening.

It was during this leisurely shamble down the skinny sidewalks that we spotted a veritable greyhound of a man. He went by us on a dead run. I’ve never seen anyone run that fast in a city unless he was carrying a stolen TV set. But this mustang carried nothing, and he certainly wasn’t dressed for jogging. He had the true workmen’s uniform here: jeans, a T-shirt, a baseball hat on backwards, and battered sneakers. He got to the next intersection before us, and he ran right into the street, and without an instant’s hesitation ran straight through the traffic passing through the intersection. Our hearts were in our mouths. A toreador has nothing on this guy, except a better tailor.

I looked back to see if Jason Bourne was chasing him. No soap there, but way back on the opposite side of the street I saw another of these human whippets. He was blazing down the sidewalk, grabbing bags of trash without slowing down one iota, then running across the street without looking, and throwing all the bags on the west side of the street.

Another of these mocha Hermes appeared, and then another. I thought to myself that if Mexicans don’t win every medal at the Olympics, it’s only for a lack of interest. Then I spotted it. The trash truck.

It was completely ordinary. Not a fairy coach, or some mechanized monster that picks up your recycling bin and shakes it all over the street on the opposite side of the truck. Just a big cab with a big metal enclosure and a big crusher on the back hopper.

And that truck didn’t stop to pick up trash. It didn’t slow down to pick up trash. There were half a dozen human barracudas hanging off that truck, and taking turns sprinting down the street, grabbing everything, and hurling it into the back, and running the compactor while they rolled. They went down that street like Patton through France. And they do the whole city, a million people’s worth of trash, just like that. I assume there’s more than one trash truck. But I can’t testify to it, because hand to God these guys might be capable of doing it alone. And not one man-jack of them looked the slightest bit winded.

So I can die happy. I know where the trash in Merida goes when I put it outside in the evening.

Hey, now. Where does the trash truck go to get rid of the trash? This is going to keep me up at night until I find out.