Anything for the Tazos

When I was 6 years old, my sister and I had a collection of plastic Pokémon tazos. Tazos, called “pogs” in English, were flat round discs the size of a large coin. They had colorful images of cartoons on one side and fun facts on the other side. Nevertheless, one could easily find them inside any bag of flavored Walkers chips.

“Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” sang my mother to one of Selena Quintanilla’s songs. My mother, Maria, was outside the house doing my sister, Yessenia’s, hair.

“Mom can you stop singing,” said Yessenia, as she rocked her feet back and forth in a white plastic chair she was sitting on.

“Your mother sings beautiful,” said my mother, as she looked at Yessenia’s reflection in the mirror.

“You are annoying me!” said Yessenia.

“Ok, ok, I will stop,” said my mother, smiling at Yessenia. Yessenia did not smiled back; she was mad because someone had stolen her tazos.

“Don’t worry dear, you will find your tazos when you least expect.”

I sat on the stoop of my house, blowing some bubbles and hearing my mother and my sister talk. Through an old-fashioned radio, songs of Selena Quintanilla were playing. As I sat there, listening to the music play, I began to picture that I was Selena. In my thoughts, I was wearing Selena’s famous purple glittery outfit. I was on a big stage that was full of hundreds and thousands of people who watched me sing, dance and spin around. I wished that one day I could be as famous as the Queen of Tex-Mex—Selena Quintanilla.

“Fani, you are up next!” said my mother, who was ready to do my hair. “You girls are very lucky to be enrolled in afternoon school.” She waited for me to sit on the chair; she had yelled my name several times.

“Mother, did you get to meet Selena?” I asked, as I sat in the white plastic chair.

“I got to see her performances on TV,” said my mother, as she began put water on my hair.

Every time my mother did my hair, I felt like I was in heaven. There were no words to describe what I was feeling, but it sure putted me to sleep. I slowly opened my eyes. From the mirror, I could see my mother moving her hips side-to-side to one of Selena’s songs.

“Beautiful!” my mother would say to me—once she was done with my hair. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked just like Yessenia; we both had ponytails tight enough to stretch our eyes horizontally and bangs that covered our foreheads. After my mother was done with my hair, I ran inside the house to put on my school uniform. My mother walked behind me.

“I don’t want to go to school!” said Yessenia.

“Honey, you are still not ready?” my mother said, as soon as she saw Yessenia sitting on the bed and crossing her arms. “Ay, Dios mio, dame paciencia!” (“Dear Lord, give me patience!”)

My mother walked up to Yessenia and held both of Yessenia’s hands, so they could dance together to the song that was playing. Yessenia got very mad at mother because she walked towards the radio and unplugged it. I wanted Yessenia to get in trouble for doing that, but instead my mom laughed. I watched carefully and told myself that I was never going to do something like that to my mother.

“Let’s make a deal,” my mother said. “If you hurry up and get ready, I will buy you a brand new bag of tazos.”

“Me too!” I said. I was kind of jealous; I could not believe my mother wanted to buy Yessenia brand new Pokémon tazos.

“Ok, but you have to get me every single Pokémon tazo,” Yessenia said.

“Deal!”

We got dressed. Our school uniform consisted of five things: a white collar-shirt, a gray-red-and-white plaid jumper dress, a red sweater, white socks and a pair of black patent leather shoes. Once we were ready, my mother would walk my sister and I to the house’s front door. Outside, my mother would make the sign of the cross across our body and then kiss our foreheads. As soon as Yessenia and I saw that our mother spit in her hands, we ran as fast as we could— to the corner of the street—so my mother would not put saliva in our hair. Once we were far enough, where our mother couldn’t reach us, we turned around to wave bye to her. She would wave back and say, “take care!”

School finished really early, at 4:50 p.m., which was the time my teacher released us to go home.

“No se les olvide copiar la terea en sus cuadernos,” (Don’t forget to copy down the homework on your notebooks,”) said my second grade teacher Nancy. I sat on my desk and quickly copied down the math problems that were written on the green board with white chalk. Soon class was over so I rushed to find my sister so we could both go home together.

My favorite part about going home was admiring the blue hills that looked like mountains, which were minutes away from my house. I once heard someone say that some people got caught growing marijuana up in the hills, and that several police officers arrived in a helicopter to arrest them. I asked my mother what “marijuana” was, and she told me it was a poisonous plant. Every time I looked at the hills, I wondered if there was still some marijuana hidden there.

“Lets hurry so we can go to the store,” said Yessenia.

“Are you going to buy more chips?” I asked her.

She nodded and said, “Anything for the tazos.”

Once we arrived home, Yessenia and I rushed to find a little porcelain basket my mother had on top of an old washing machine. There is where she kept the pesos (cents). Once we grabbed enough pesos, we told our mother we were going to the store.

“Get me 1 kg of eggs, ½ kg of ham and one red carton of milk.”

“Mom, I am going to forget that!”

“Fine, let me write it down on a piece of paper,” said my mother, giving Yessenia a 20-dollar peso.

“This should be enough for you girls to get your candy as well.”

Yessenia and I walked two doors from our house and we were at the nearest store. While Yessenia was giving the lady the list my mother had given her, I was choosing between a candy, some chips or small muffin. In my country it was perfectly legal to have plastic toys or stickers inside the candy, chips and bread. I chose a Bubbaloo bubble gum that had The Powerpuff Girls sticker’s inside. I had a collection of stickers; I had three identical stickers of Mojo JoJo, but I decided to take a risk in case I got some other character.

My sister walked next to me and picked a red bag of Walkers chips that were tomato-ketchup flavored. Once we paid and left the store, my sister’s eyes grew wide— as she opened her chips— to reveal her Pokémon tazo.

“This is just what I wanted!” she said licking the chip powder from the tazo.

She had gotten a brand new tazo of Chikorita, which was her favorite grass Pokémon. We went home happily. Pokémon. We went home happily.