copyright © 2002 James Erwin
The Hilarious Mexico Sketch By James Erwin
  
 Lights down and up.
 
 Dr Young:
(pointing to imaginary Chevrolet)...And so you see, while we modern Americans wastefully throw out a car after removing a few pieces, the Mexican reuses every part of the Chevrolet pickup. Engines are reassembled to form crude whiskey stills, seat covers are made into clothing, and hoods are shaped into huge pans in which to fry a hacienda's communal meal of beans. I think the subtle elegance of this tradition shows that Americans can learn something from even the most primitive society.
  
 Dr Edelstein:
Thank you, Professor Young. I will speak today on the current debate regarding Mexico and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This hypothesis states that not only does language communicate thought- language shapes thought. For instance, we use the word "Mexican" to refer to Mexicans. However, Dr. Keene's (gesture to imaginary Dr. Keene in the audience) recent research shows that Mexicans refer to each other using literally thousands, if not millions, of different names. Now, proponents of Sapir-Whorf would argue that this level of cognitive distinction shows that Mexicans are not only capable of distinguishing any individual Mexican from another, but indeed make their social decisions on an entirely individual basis. The most famous rebuttal to this idea came from psychologist Dr. Jonathan Wattle in 1962. He took a random sample of nearly three hundred freshmen at the University of Minnesota and showed the control group a series of pictures of Mexicans, labeled simply "Mexican". He then showed the experimental group the same series of pictures, labeled with the individual names given by Mexicans. He found that the experimental group was no more able to differentiate the pictures than the control group. His conclusion was that the human brain is simply not capable of distinguishing between individual Mexicans, and that the Sapir-Whorf interpretation is fatally flawed. Next we have Dr. Alfonso Serra of the National University of Mexico, who has also asked to speak on this subject.
 
 Dr. Serra:
(trembling with barely controlled anger) Thank you, Professor Edelstein. I would like to open with a few personal remarks. When I was asked to speak at this symposium, I reacted at first with what I could generously term skepticism. But I put that aside and came here in a spirit of cautious optimism, hoping that I might contribute to a dialogue between open-minded scientists- hoping that I would not be subjected to a pointless and frankly racist charade. I see now that I was sadly mistaken. I see that what you, Professor Edelstein, so grandly call a Department of Mexicology is nothing but a funhouse mirror! You sketch out your own contorted reflection and hold it up to the world and say, "HERE IS MEXICO!" Well, I tell you this. For all your self-important posturing and grand titles, you know nothing of Mexico!
 
 (step out from behind podium)
  
 Mexico is a woman.
  
 You stand on a beach, and the sun drapes itself gently across your shoulders, and suddenly you are alive. You can feel your pulse swaying within you, and the light throbs with your every breath, and the sand between your toes sends feathers of delight sweeping across your skin, arcing up your spine. You walk, and it feels as if you are floating, as though just watching the ocean surge and boil is enough to suspend you, weightless and timeless, in its depths; as if you have already surrendered to the flow of something both infinitely majestic and infinitely kind. And then you see her. Mexico.
  
 She lays on a blanket on the sand, her eyes looking to the sun. There are other nations sunning themselves, and you thread your way amongst them... Germany, Brazil, the Federated States of Micronesia... But Mexico... she draws you. Through the throngs, you are pulled ever closer to her. She lays perfectly relaxed; more than relaxed. The sand seems to swell beneath her, to buoy her. The earth holds her gingerly as a mother holds an infant, and you know that if she were to rise and walk, the earth would soften and ease her way, the wind would change its course to send a warm caress of farewell along her back, the sun would light her path and set the clouds to glorious fire at her passing, that every man would see her as you see her now, framed against the first crimson ripples of the Caribbean sunset.
 
 You sink to one knee at Mexico's side. Her skin is the color of a warm hand caressing your brow. Her hair is as soft as the whisper of grass sliding free in the first light of spring. She opens her eyes and she looks at you, and her eyes are deepest black, a black that is not the absence of light, but the gathering of light into a single pulling embrace. Her hand reaches up to your face, the lightest touch, and yet it sends a warm pressure throughout your entire body.
 
 Suddenly you are kissing Mexico, and your bodies are crushed together on the blanket, and your heart is roaring in your ears. You have an enormous erection, an erection like no other you have ever had. It feels as though all of your blood, all of your weight, your entire being, is surging into your penis, and as you plunge into her and she screams like the angels announcing the birth of Christ, you are a weightless phantom, a shape suggested by electric surges of passion, anchored by your penis to the world, to love, to Mexico. You surge into her, you are spinning and dancing within her, you stretch out your arms and somehow you are her, seeing yourself with perfect love, as she is you, looking down upon her perfect beauty, and you climax, and it is as if the ocean behind you was hurling itself through you into her, and the recoil flings you backwards through the empty darkness where the ocean was, falling backwards for thousands of miles into the warmest, darkest recesses of the ocean floor, softly as though you are nestling within the bosom of the earth itself. It is the perfect rest, it is perfect joy, it is Mexico... Mexico... Mexico.
 
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