The indications of my nationality are not erasable, despite efforts to be inconspicuous. I’m the only foreigner in a small Argentine town with “USA” practically tattooed on my forehead, evident from the way I walk too fast while drinking a soda to the way I make strained eye contact to better understand people. Every day provides another chance to relearn something, to notice what makes me different, to do something which at home would be effortless, but now has become a persistent difficulty.
I check three pharmacies, four kiosks, and two “major” grocery stores for regular run-of-the-mill eyedrops and cannot find any. I try explaining the product in question to a woman behind the counter at a pharmacy, and she looks at me like a circus freak, a crazy person from another planet, with the shock and horror reserved for seeing a dead body. I swear my Spanish was impeccable, but my accent perhaps indecipherable. As usual, I am irked by her seemingly hostile response. I want to hop over the counter to give her a demonstration, armed with pepper spray and the Visine logo.
I go to three other pharmacies with the same objective and every time I am laughed out of the store (or if not laughed, merely gawked at in bewilderment). I consider the possibility that Argentines do not use eyedrops, but that seems ridiculous. This country’s citizens have dry eyes like any other, people who wear contacts, and I’m sure a wide variety of ocular diseases. I mull this over to myself incessantly, as I do so often with an array of concerns, until I can’t stand to think of eyedrops for another second. At that moment a friendly neighborhood dog saunters up to me, a tiny black pug with a wrinkly face, as though he were going to help me. He sits down at my feet and looks up at me, panting and whacking his tiny tail against the dirt road, mixing up a small flurry of dust. I am having a moment of calm resignation, alone on this road, during a silent conversation with a stray dog. As chance would have it, we are situated in front of another pharmacy, though this is not surprising because there’s a pharmacy on every other corner. I go in, just once more, and try my very best to communicate the message. Luck! Not only are they familiar with the product in question, but they have some available for purchase, for me, right this minute! I am so happy, happy in the way that accomplishing something completely pedestrian can fulfill a person temporarily, like making a decent omelet or finding money in the couch.
Practically dancing down the street, I am feeling so good I stop by the grocery store for another one of life’s minor victories. I have successful interactions with the produce guy, the meat counter guy, the bakery guy, and the cashier, and I’m on a roll. I stroll down the street with a guilty pleasure song in my head, a few blocks from home. I soon pass through one of the ubiquitous groups of teenagers who form a sidewalk gauntlet of giggling and inane flirtation, and right at this moment, I trip on an uneven stair and my bag of milk goes flying, along with my loose eggs wrapped in newspaper, and an apple, bruised fatally. The eggs are long gone, but I grab the apple and struggle to recover the milk, holding the wet, sticky, dirt-covered bag by the newly formed hole to keep the rest in. The teenagers are pointing and snickering, like in some terrible movie, or a high school flashback. I slink off with my groceries, barely able to carry them now with one hand on the milk, sighing to myself. Today is day eight. Only 262 left to go.
