OK Hon. This picture was not supposed to be taken from my mother’s family album you know? I need to explain for you. It is not so bad. What happened is that Rosita takes my handbag from me and she said she only wants to look at it. Next thing I know she is pretending it is hers and when I ask her to give it back to me because the procession is starting she holds on to it. Then when I try to take it from her she pulls it back and starts to cry and tell everybody I am a thief and I am stealing her handbag! Hon. It was not nice. I still remember it because everybody look at me and point their fingers and say, “That Mantilla, look at her, she’s a thief, she’s making poor little Rosita cry again! She’s a bad girl.” So then I think I say something like, “Rosita, you crybaby. I’ll give you something to cry about!” and so I slapped her in the face just a little bit. Just to make her listen. Not hard.

But maybe I learn a lesson from that Hon. Everybody want to be nice all the time, but that’s not possible you know? Sometimes you have to stand up and fight for something. Like they say, you cannot go forward without a little bit of friction. If you have a fight now and again so what about it? It makes life interesting, and maybe you learn something and solve some problems. It’s like Augusto says when he goes into the bullring, “The fight is the beautiful struggle. You take some risks. The fight with the bull is like fighting El Diablo. You have to take him seriously, but maybe also you not take him seriously. See, Augusto plays with the bull and makes him mad and sort of dances with the bull, but then, whoosh! he kills the bull and he falls down flat. It’s like that with El Diablo. You have to realize it is a battle, and then step up and fight. When you do this you feel much better.

So what happen with Rosita is that later after Mass my friend Eva tells everyone that Rosita stole the handbag from me to start with and everyone starts kissing me and saying, “That is okay Mantilla. We know you are a good girl.” And they are whispering in my ear, “That Rosita is a little bit spoiled maybe.” So I am thinking that if I had not stood up to Rosita no one would have known the truth and she would have got away with stealing my bag from me which was given to me by my grandmother.

Let me tell you something else hon. These little things that happen when we are children? Sometimes they come true in other ways. So what happened with that handbag was that I took it with me to Salamanca University and it is on my desk and I am thinking about what am I going to write for my thesis when I am doing my course in ecclesiastical haberdashery and I see this handbag and did a paper all about the burse which the priest has on the altar, and how it evolved into the purse or handbag for people and this paper gets me my degree because it is so good, and so the handbag was worth fighting for and I don’t know what happened to Rosita, but the last time I heard she was married to a rich man who buy everything for her, but she doesn’t love him and she drives a big black car and goes to the hairdresser every other day and is bored and unhappy, and I’m sorry to hear it hon, but it doesn’t surprise me.