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[quote=”tonto”]Simple truth is that people are always looking for a way to climb up economically…and if you have a beautiful young woman on your arm…and she is half your age…it is not your old wrinkled body that excites her…[/quote]
Point well taken, just to clarify though, in my case she wasn’t half my age, I was 46 and she was 36… maybe that’s still the same thing, but I was careful NOT to get involved with a kid half my age… and she had three almost grown kids… this was no “hot chick” believe me. I thought I loved her, I DID love her… and she was just really good at pretending.
That is something I think gringo men ought to be more cognizant of. As this person so correctly points out, the economic motives involved are so powerful that investing a year or two in a total lie is easy. Compared to spending your old age trying to get some tico ex to pay his child support, trying to get the government to pay your lousy $100.00 a month pension… living in a shack with 6 other people… in short, the alternatives for aging beauty queens here are dismal. And with the laws set up like they are, there’s really nothing for a woman to lose… 3 years with a man, and he belongs to her, and she can throw him out on the street and just walk away with the money. Sad but true.
[quote=”guru”]Under what circumstances did a husband owe his Tica wife a pension? Was the pay now amount of $1200 for $200 due a typo or typical court inflation?[/quote]
I think Part III will help explain a little of this… about how I got into this mess.
The $1200.00 figure is for four months plus the December double amount including the alguinado. I actually paid the last time in February of 2010… so I have “gotten away” with not paying much more.
I am not exagerating anything in any of this… my economic situation is very very bad. I was losing a lot of weight last year. I did not have $200.00 a month myself, let alone that amount to give to Doña Violeta. It is still pretty bad… I am hoping to get some work in a call center soon, driving the cab pays really lousy and it is dangerous.
But before everyone starts throwing rocks at me about how irresponsible and stupid I am to not have a great income I want to say that I have had my reasons for doing things as I have done. I had been a graphic designer for 15 years and 2009 was the year that broke me. I wanted to continue and thought I would make it if I just hung in there, but I was wrong.
A combination of things fixed my professional wagon. Frankly, I am too old to be a graphic designer anymore, my style is out of touch with current culture and anyway, 15 years in front of a computer screen 12 hours a day is long enough.
I have made a transition to a kind of work that I never dreamed I would have the opportunity to learn. I am IN my community and I am a part of it. Working in español is a real joy and serving the community this way is very satisfying. I am proud of that. I am also proud of living “like” my costa rican neighbors. I am poorer than a lot of them actually.
After working one month driving I went to jail for two months. I have been back on the road for about a month now, but this business too is hurting… too many piratas, portadores and taxi rojos and not enough clients.
The theme behind everything in my “soap opera” is the effect that poverty has on us all. There’s a lot of people who are “falling through the cracks” and I describe a couple further on in the series… I hope to make their general situation better known by writing here.
Most people in costa rica are living on no margin at all and working 14 hours a day for rice and beans. This is making estafas and dope dealing and robbery REALLY attractive alternatives for all kinds of people. Something needs to be done or… well… more people will go to jail for being poor, the ruthless rip-off environment will get worse, and more people will have a chance to write a Soap Opera of their own.
