Jody was vago de amadres. He’d been vago since he was a child. His parents, siblings and cousins both bragged about and feared his spirit of defiance.
“Don’t stick that bobby pin in the socket!” he was once admonished.
Jody smiled mischievously: he’d already gotten shocked.
Jody routinely disregarded warnings that didn’t come with a stern threat of punishment. Whenever he could, he went ahead with his mischief. Shocks, scrapes and bruises proved to be his only cost. Every admonition and plea for caution that came afterwards rang more and more untrue, none more outstanding than the other.
It became a monotonous game until one morning when he was 8 years-old he rushed out to the street after heavy rain the night before to splash around in a large puddle that always formed in front of his house. He jumped into the puddle running at full speed just as a speeding car splashed through it in the opposite lane and sent up a sheet of water that arched above Jody’s head like a surf wave. The thrill overwhelmed him. He wanted to do it again and again. He waited for cars to come and rushed out to meet them, but they all slowed down to cross the puddle cautiously. He repeated the drill so often that day that he lost sense of what he was doing.
It wasn’t until noon that a fast-moving car appeared. Jody immediately ran into the street to meet it. As the car approached the puddle, it veered toward its narrowest end, which happened to be the curb in front of Jody’s house. At that moment, Jody was running full steam into the puddle. But before he was even two steps into the street, the car sped up and grazed his bare chest.
Jody saw it all happened in slow motion. His view of the chrome door handle was suddenly clouded by a wave of puddle water.
Jody couldn’t believe what he’d just experienced. He knew that had he run any faster, he would’ve ended up underneath the car. Shock turned into thrill then into ecstasy. And he never forgot the feeling.
From then on, he was addicted to being vago. His pranks grew more death-defying with age. It was only a matter of time before his defiance landed him in county jail. What did it? Running from a migra roadblock.
“Why’d you run if you’re a citizen?” he was asked after a brief pointless chase through the Southside.
“Cuz I never had the law chase me,” he responded.
“You’re sentenced to 10 days in the county jail. Don’t be vago and try to escape,” the judge admonished him.
