Tomorrow is Election Day for the United States of America. The American people will gather to choose their next president. Some of us will worry for The Future of Our Nation. At least one of us will wish Batman were running for president instead of Trump or Clinton.

The presidential election takes me back to Ecuador, a nation of notorious political instability, and That Time I Saw a President Kicked Out of Office.

Lucio Gutiérrez was Ecuador’s president for only a couple of years, but long enough for his name to become a punchline in my family. Gutiérrez put up a lot of billboards during his presidency that read “Lucio Construye,” meaning “Lucio Builds.”

These signs, which often stood near roads under construction, were intended, I presume, to promote some initiative to improve Ecuador’s public infrastructure. What they really signified was unfinished roads and bumpy driving conditions. When my family and I were out driving, a “Lucio Construye” billboard warned us to brace ourselves for jolts. We reached a point at which any bumpy roads provoked me and my brothers to shout “Lucio construye!” from the back seat.

I don’t know who spray painted that question mark, but was a valid question: Lucio construye? Lucio builds? I guess Lucio did build the sign.

Following some political unrest, the Congress of Ecuador voted on April 20, 2005 to remove Gutiérrez from power, and the military publicly withdrew their support for him. Gutiérrez was overthrown by his own government. He fled the Presidential Palace in a helicopter, escaping mobs of protesters.

I heard his helicopter fly overhead. At the time, I was sitting quietly in my World History classroom at school, listening to updates on the political situation. My teacher had abandoned the day’s history lesson—after all, history was being made that day. As Gutiérrez fled, we heard the drone of a helicopter far overhead. “That’s his helicopter!” someone exclaimed, and it may have been. Alternatively, it may well have been a news or military helicopter, but I like to think it was the ex-president on the run.

Some of the protests were pretty rowdy. At one point, I got a face full of tear gas while walking to school. The wind blew the gas from a nearby protest to my school campus. It hit me like a bucket of vinegar, and stung quite a bit. On a scale of one to ten, one being a mild insult and ten being a jellyfish sting, the tear gas was maybe a three.

Since I didn’t actually see Lucio Gutiérrez removed from power, I suppose the title of this post is a bit inaccurate. It should be “That Time I Heard a President Kicked Out of Office” since I heard the helicopter, or even “That Time I Smelled a President Kicked Out of Office” because of the tear gas, but those titles just are just weird.

Alas, poor Lucio, who pretended to build things. We miss you. (We don’t really.)

In the end, the vice president, Alfredo Palacio, assumed the presidency, later to be succeeded by Ecuador’s current prez, Rafael Correa. The political unrest surrounding Gutiérrez subsided, only to be replaced by conflicts surrounding Correa. In fact, when I double-checked my facts for this post, I learned that Correa blamed Gutiérrez for allegedly provoking unrest in an attempt to instigate a coup. Another president, another crisis. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

I love Ecuador, my homeland, mi patria, but its politics aren’t the greatest.

Tomorrow is Election Day for the United States of America. I know a lot of people are worried, but hey—nobody is attempting to overthrow our president at the moment, and there probably won’t be tear gas. It could be worse. The road ahead may be rough, with plenty of bumps and jolts, but we can always shout “Lucio construye!” and keep moving forward.

Sixteen years ago, somewhere in the jungles of Ecuador, something happened that changed my life. I was nine years old, bookish, chubby, fond of Star Wars, and—if my memory is correct, which it probably isn’t—recently bespectacled. (I wasn’t born wearing glasses, you know.) The thing that happened on that day shaped my destiny in ways I could not have imagined.

On that day, I tasted coffee for the first time.

In the brightly-colored blur that is the life of Adam Stück, such concrete details as dates are elusive. It’s hard enough for me to trace most memories to a particular year, let alone a specific month. In this case, however, one fact allows me to place the day I discovered coffee in April, May, or June of 1999. My life-changing experience happened around the time Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was in theaters. I am certain of this.

I had just turned nine, and was eager to seem as grown-up as possible. My joy and excitement at receiving eyeglasses was tremendous; wearing glasses seemed like a huge step toward the sophistication of adulthood. (It turned out to be a huge step toward a world that isn’t blurry.) Yes, I wanted to be a grownup, and nothing seemed more grown-up than coffee.

Adam Stück, roughly 1 year B.T.C. (Before Tasting Coffee)

However, some faint intuition told me coffee wasn’t suitable for children. It was an adult drink, like whiskey or vodka, and therefore beyond my reach. I had only ever seen adults drink coffee. Whenever it was served to adults, kids were offered milk or juice instead. The message was clear: Coffee ain’t for kiddos.

I was mistaken, of course. My parents would surely have let me try it. However, convinced coffee was exclusively a grown-up drink, I was too timid to ask.

The day before that fateful morning, my dad and I (and maybe my younger bro; I don’t remember) piled into our dusty Trooper and drove from our home in Santo Domingo de los Colorados to a place my dad called “Charlie’s camp,” a campground surrounded by jungle. Charlie’s camp surely had a proper name, but I don’t remember ever hearing it; I can only assume a man named Charlie either owned or managed the place.

Our Trooper was a beast with the roaring power of a rhino and all the spacious comfort of a coffin.

My memories of Charlie’s camp are few. There was a river nearby with muddy banks studded with rocks. I recall fences with rusting barbed wire, and remember munching a bag of Star Wars-shaped sweet crackers. My recollections of Charlie’s camp are faint, but one stands out clearly after all these years.

After spending the night, we ate breakfast with the camp crew. It was a campesino (rural) meal of pancitos (bread rolls) and boiled eggs. Black coffee was the only drink available. With nothing else to drink, I realized I might be able to persuade my dad to let me try a cup, even though coffee was clearly and obviously not a drink suitable for minors.

Much to my surprise, my dad raised no objections, and I was finally free to try the stuff that had tantalized me for so long. I filled my cup, lifted it to my lips… and very quickly set it down again.

Coffee was disgusting.

At any rate, that’s what I thought at the time. I was a foolish, ignorant child.

Faced with the prospect of drinking an entire cup of bitter coffee, I did what any sensible child would do—shoveled in plenty of sugar. I took another sip. The taste was much improved, and I felt like a proper grown-up.

The rest is sweet, sweet history. I started drinking coffee regularly in high school, and it gradually replaced tea as my beverage of choice. In college, I began drinking my coffee with milk instead of sugar for health reasons. My daily intake had increased so much that a proportional increase in my sugar intake would probably have caused my heart to explode.

Don’t laugh, guys. It could’ve happened.

That’s the story of how I discovered coffee, and how one day changed my life forever. In the words of that guy from the latest Mad Max movie: Oh, what a day. What a lovely day!

Jellyfish are nasty little gits. Sure, they may look pretty when you see them in aquariums or on television, with their billowing bodies and delicate tentacles, but jellyfish are rotten company when you’re in the water with them.

When I lived in Ecuador, my family and I vacationed at the beach or the jungle. Our favorite beaches lie on a stretch of coast not far from the city of Esmeraldas. (We spent a few years in Esmeraldas in the early nineties; we’ve moved around a lot.) One of the best beaches belongs to a resort called El Acantilado, which is Spanish for The Cliff. As its name suggests, El Acantilado is located on a cliff overlooking the beach.

The beach below El Acantilado is lovely in a brownish, grayish sort of way.

My family and I loved El Acantilado, and visited its beach once or twice a year from my childhood to my graduation from high school. Of course, not every visit was perfectly pleasant. It was in the murky, gray-green ocean just off the beach that I had a run-in with jellyfish.

I had forgotten this dreadful encounter until a couple of days ago. As anyone who has known me for more than five minutes can confirm, I have a wretchedly poor memory. Every time I think I’ve finally run out of interesting stories to share on this blog, I recall some new misadventure. This one was brief, but painful.

I don’t recall in what year I ran afoul of jellyfish, but I’m pretty sure it was during my middle school years. My younger bro and I were messing about in the surf when I felt an excruciating pain along one leg. (I don’t remember whether it was the right or left.) “Get out of the water!” I shrieked, stumbling through waist-deep water toward the beach.

I reached the safety of land, collapsed upon dry sand, and inspected my leg. My entire calf had turned red, with pinpricks of crimson, and was beginning to swell. It hurt like the dickens. My parents and younger brother (who had made it safely to the beach) gathered round to examine the sting.

Within ten or fifteen minutes, my calf had swelled and hardened; I remember saying my leg felt like a heavy club. The swelling went down overnight, but it took nearly a week for my calf to heal. My skin burned and stung for days. Needless to say, I didn’t go swimming again for a while.

The ocean beyond El Acantilado is opaque, so I never saw the little blighter that drifted against my leg. For all I know, it may not even have been a jellyfish; I suppose it could have been some other stinging marine creature. Whatever it was, its sting hurt like all heck. Flipping awful little git.

Besides that miserable jellyfish, I haven’t been stung by anything but bees, though I once narrowly escaped a sting from a bullet ant. Good times, good times.

I hope to revisit Ecuador someday, and El Acantilado is near the top of my list of places I want to see again. (Other locations on the list include the Pailón del Diablo waterfall, the Papallacta hot springs, and a tiny bakery called Bom Pan that has the best bread rolls in the universe.) Someday, God willing, I may return to El Acantilado.

Flipping heck, I miss this place.

I’ll probably stay out of the water, though.

I begin a long vacation tomorrow, and I’m thankful. For weeks, work has been an exhausting, stressful, thankless grind. Dash it all, I am so, so thankful for a long break.

While musing upon vacations I had as a kid in Ecuador, I recently recalled That Time My Vacation Held Me Prisoner: an adventure equally restful and stressful, when my family and I were prevented from going home by barricades of burning tires. Ah, Ecuador, why did I ever leave you?

Ecuador: land of dazzling natural beauty, diverse cultures, superb cuisine… and horrible, horrible cockroaches. I knew I had a reason for leaving.

In the jungles of Ecuador, east of the Andes, there is a little town called Shell Mera. (This tiny settlement made national news in the fifties due to the Auca incident, in which five missionaries were killed.) Near Shell Mera is a camp called Mangayacu. This motley collection of cabins, pastures, and the world’s best swimming pool was one of my family’s favorite vacation spots until we left Ecuador in 2008.

Seriously, this pool is awesome: no chlorine, no life guards, and the exciting possibility of cutting open your feet on sharp rocks!

My family and I were once stranded in Mangayacu. This was a long time ago; I was somewhere between first and fourth grade, which would put this adventure in the late nineties. I’d nearly forgotten it; I’m very gifted at forgetting things.

My parents and brothers and I had finished our visit to Mangayacu and reluctantly packed up our things. After saying goodbye to our cabin, we took off in our dusty car and bumped along dirt roads in the direction of the town of Baños. (Yes, this happens to be Spanish for bathrooms. The word also means baths; the town is named after its hot springs.)

We were stopped by piles of burning tires. It was a paro (workers’ strike) shutting down the road. My dad got out of the car and pleaded our case to the strikers. They didn’t let us pass.

Back we went to the cabin we’d just left, delighted to enjoy a longer vacation, and apprehensive at how our vacation suddenly held us prisoner.

I suppose there are worse prisons than the cabins at Mangayacu. At least the view is nice!

I don’t remember how many extra days we stayed at Mangayacu, but it was at least two or three. We scoured one or two tiny local shops for necessities like bread, and had a few meals at a local restaurant. I recall their stock running low because of the paro. As fun as it was at first to be stranded in a cozy jungle cabin, we felt more stressed with each new day. We wanted to go home!

At last, after my brother and I had missed at least a couple of school days, we made it safely back to our home in Santo Domingo de los Colorados. My older brother returned to Quito for school, and I resumed my studies at home.

Later visits to Mangayacu were undisturbed by paros and flaming tires. It was kind of fun to be held prisoner by our vacation, but I’m thankful it never happened again.

Every time I’m afraid I’ve run out of stories for these That Time I _____ posts, a memory of some odd adventure drifts back to me from the brightly-colored blur of the past twenty-something years. It’s surreal, and sweetly nostalgic. It makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten.

Ah, well. It doesn’t matter. My latest vacation begins tomorrow, and I can’t wait. Here’s hoping this one doesn’t take me prisoner!

High school was a strange chapter of my life. I moved repeatedly, attended schools on separate continents, became a writer, discovered my love of coffee and broke down on the Ecuadorian coast in the rain at night in an area infested with bandits. Good times, good times.

Some of my best high school memories come from the Alliance Academy International in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The school offered an excellent education, and its faculty consisted largely of lunatics. It was at this school that I became the father of a small, rotund, green-skinned child. His mother and I named him Hakkatan Melchizedek Stück.

He had his father’s, um… dish towel.

My egg-shaped offspring was the result of a project in my senior year in which students were put in pairs, given watermelons and required to spend a week nurturing them as loving parents. This was meant to teach us all about parenting. I’m not sure exactly how that was supposed to work, except that babies and watermelons are both kind of heavy and don’t respond well to being dropped.

My wife for the project, whom I’ll call Socrates, wanted to name our child Hakkatan. I wanted to name him Melchizedek. In the end, in the spirit of matrimonial harmony, we compromised and gave him both names. Our classmates gave their children boring names, except for one young gentleman who called his melon Triton Quincy McFarland.

Hakkatan was a quiet, cheerful child. He never cried, always grinned and gave his parents hardly any trouble.

Of course, the same wasn’t true of all my classmates’ kids. At least one watermelon met a grim end when his parents abandoned him in a dorm room for several hours. According to the story I heard, they returned to find half the melon smashed on the floor, the other half stuck full of knives and a note that read NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHILD ALONE.

Some of my classmates really got into parenting their melons, dressing them up in baby clothes and wheeling them everywhere in strollers. I don’t recall how Socrates and I handled Hakkatan; we may have carried him around in a basket, but I don’t really remember. There is one thing I remember clearly: how Hakkatan met his end.

You see, the parenting project lasted only a week. Hakkatan was my child for seven days. After that, he was merely a watermelon. Some of my classmates celebrated the end of the project by eating their melons. That seemed a bit morbid, so I settled for chopping up Hakkatan with a machete and disposing of his body in a trash bag.

Socrates and I each received a good grade for the project, after which we dissolved our week-long marriage. She and I remained on good terms until our graduation from the Alliance Academy International; I haven’t seen her since. As for Hakkatan, well, his rounded figure and beaming face nearly faded from my memory. It was only as I browsed old photos recently that I stumbled upon the picture above: my child, smiling at me from across the years, neither bitter nor resentful at his violent demise.

Requiescat in pace, my son. Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!