Chihuahuas and Healing Asthma

Yesterday while I was resting on a bench in the plaza, a Mexican man came over to sit next to me. He talked to me for about an hour about his desperate life. He spoke perfect English. He said his parents taught it to him. They died in a car crash a few years ago. I felt so sad for him but his needs were too great for me to fulfill.  I just bought him something to eat. He told me a story that I am passing along here. The Mexicans have many unusual beliefs about ways to heal the body. This is the strangest belief I have ever heard. 

He said that when he was a little boy his parents bought him a chihuahua to sleep with him and be with him all the time. He said that the little chihuahua took away his asthma. It went into the dog's body and the dog coughed all the time but he no longer had asthma... It had gone into the dog. He said, All Mexicans know about this. He then turned to another Mexican man who was resting next to us and asked him if he knew about it. The man said NO, he knew nothing about that way of healing asthma.

I have not asked anyone else about this so called popular Mexican way of healing asthma. So maybe it was just part of his story that he was weaving for me on a quiet Saturday afternoon. It was a long, complicated and desperate story about getting deported from the States, having no money, his toe being cut off, (he took off his sock and showed me his foot with the missing toe) sleeping in a garage filled with scorpions, etc. His command of the English language gave him a real edge over other people asking for money and help. His needs were so great that I couldn't have fulfilled them. All I could do was buy him something to eat. I think that as an older American woman, I am an easy target for desperate people. Older women usually have money and even more important, Compassion... 

It was a sad story that he told me and when I left that bench I was feeling very appreciative of my good luck in life and also very guilty that I couldn't change his bad luck.  I hope that one day soon he can make his way back to his home where he said his little chihuahua is waiting for him, coughing with the asthma that he took away from him when he was a child. 

WAIT A MINUTE!!!  I have been played!!!  If that chihuahua was with him when he was a child and he is fifty years old now, that dog could not possibly still be alive and waiting for him!  That man is GOOD!  I am a sucker..... He almost talked me out of a thousand pesos for a bus ticket home, back to that little asthmatic dog.  I should add GULLIBLE to that list of qualities that older women have but maybe it is just me that is gullible.  My mother used to tell me that but it only made me angry. Now I know. She was right! I AM GULLIBLE......