For some reason, this was another week where “Why are you moving to Mexico?” seemed to be my friends’ favorite question. I have used all the Tried and Trues. But, this week called for something new.
Near the end of his life, Teddy Roosevelt undertook an expedition into interior Brazil. When asked why a man of his age would want to undertake such a risky journey, he responded: “I had to go. It was my last chance to be a boy.” And that was my answer to my friends this week.
I thought of that today while I was sitting in an all-employee meeting. Suggestions were the order of the day. And they came fast and furious. I chuckled to myself when the managers responded to several suggestions: “That is a good idea. Unfortunately, there are liability issues."
Then tonight, while reading an article in The American Spectator on Evel Knievel’s death, each of those events came together. Paul Beston wrote of his admiration for Knievel as a young boy in the 1970s: “His one deed – flying through the air on a motorcycle, neatly bridging the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford – combined everything a boy craves when he is at play: high speed, noise, excitement, and the tantalizing possibility of disaster.”
Reading that sentence, I knew that is really why I want to move to Mexico. I do not want to live in a world where liability trumps good ideas – or even ideas that are merely fun. I want to go somewhere I can live out my last chance to be a boy.
When my nephew graduated from high school in the mid-1990s, I offered to take him on a trip – his choice. We could either go to Kyrgyzstan or to England. I was positive that he would choose bandits, pistols, and ponies. Instead, he picked dinners at Langan’s and Le Tante Claire, dress circle at the Prince Edward, and the uneven pleasures of Oxford and Blackpool. At 18, I may have made the same choice. But I have not yet put the boy in me to rest. He just may be in Mexico.
