In Mexico, there are innumer- able institutional acronyms, like DIFOCUR, FOVISSTE, SEMARNAP, etc. I have no idea what the letters specifically stand for, but I do have a vague notion as to what some of them might generally mean. For example, DIFOCUR (dee-foe-COOR) is a government agency which has something to do with culture and the arts. DIF (as in Chateau d’If, rhymes with beef) helps children, and is headed by the first lady, Martha Sahagun. INFONAVIT (infonaVEET) is a housing program. UAS (rhymes with moss) is the University of Sinaloa. These are all fine upstanding organizations, and I hold no personal grudge against any of them. The ones which I view with alarm are three: ICATSIN (ee cat SEEN), INEA (ee NEIGH ya) and IT-MAR (eat MAR). I call them the three Is, as in “ay ay ay!” It all started with INEA, a fine upstanding organization dedicated to tutoring those who didn’t get as far as they would like in their schooling. My wife’s lovely younger sister was in charge of our neighborhood remedial 3 Rs program when she rather inconsiderately married and moved to Minnesota, leaving her post vacant. So guess who volunteers for this stressful, time consuming job? I’ll give you a hint: not me. Anyhow, now our closets are overflowing with stacks of text books with titles like Fracciones y Porcentages and Sexualidad Juvenil. The workload is constant, leaving Sra Brady with little time for demeaning household chores. She’s busy educating humanity. As though this were not outrageous enough, she shortly thereafter announces that she

will be attending classes at ICATSIN, a vocational school, every weekday afternoon for three hours not including the commute and loitering time. She wants to learn to sew. Give me a break! We already have so many name brand clothes they won’t fit in the closets which are in any case already full of INEA textbooks. As for the kids, they outgrow their apparel faster than a speeding Singer. Then, to top it all off, her alma mater IT-MAR, an institute of marital science or martian technology or something, decides to allow former alumni to take exams and receive credit for classes missed due to mitigating circumstances such as motherhood. So now, in her “spare time,” she is poring over thick books with titles like Estadistica and Mercado-tecnia. It gives a man great pride to see his little woman dedicating herself to the betterment of humanity through education and folkloric crafts, but who is going to take up the slack in the household drudgery department? Who is going to wash the dishes, scold the children and water the papayas? I’ll give you a hint: not me. Thank Holy God for that most powerful and omnipresent of all Mexican institutions, SUEGRA (SWEG rah, or mother-in-law). I would love to help out around the home once in a while, but my grueling night job doesn’t leave me much energy during the day. Besides, my important and demanding column for the Pacific Pearl keeps me far too deep in thought for distractions such as housework. Whenever my extrasensory intuition tells me I am about to be assigned a task, I just slink off to the roof with a carbonated beverage and a notebook and get to “work.”