The following is a quiz that every American expat wannabe to Mexico should be required by Mexican law to take. This will help you determine if moving to Mexico to spend the rest of your life here is right for you. It should be the basis whether Mexico issues you a visa to take one step onto Mexican soil.

1) The following will make you run screaming for the nearest taxi to get you to the airport for an emergency airlift back to the U.S.A.:

a. Large mountainous piles of dog poop on the sidewalks.

b. Pickup trucks parked in front of butcher shops with partially slaughtered, bloodied meat in the back.

c. Men, women, and children placing the snout of a pig onto a flour or corn tortilla, wrapping it, and then consuming it while making loud smacking and squishing sounds.

d. All the above.

2) The following will incite you to flapping your arms like a deranged windmill, cursing madly, and lecturing Mexicans in English (which they probably cannot comprehend):

a. Seeing a Mexican mother serving her child a taco for breakfast rather than Special K cereal with skim milk.

b. Seeing Mexicans eating a Styrofoam plate filled with refried beans, topped with the most virulent chilies, and chips morning, noon, and night.

c. Witnessing the rolling corn-on-the-cob shack woman slathering copious amounts of FAT FULL mayonnaise on corn on the cob and then stuffing it into the mouth of a 2-year-old.

d. None of the above since you come from America where more than 67% of the population is fatter than hogs and so what the hell do you know about good nutrition anyway!

3) You can tolerate the following without needing massive amounts of tranquilizers or an open-ended Prozac prescription:

a. Invisible marching drummer and bugle bands that you can hear every night starting at 7:30 p.m., playing the same hideously repetitive tune, from another dimension that is bleeding over into your reality (you hear them but they cannot ever be seen!).

b. Warfare-grade explosives being set off during the day or night for the advent of a fiesta which rattle windows, cause paintings to fall off the walls and jar you senseless.

c. Banshee screaming men roaming the streets as soon it is daylight screaming the words, "gas" and "water".

d. Barking dogs, crowing roosters, quacking ducks and geese, screeching parrots, honking car alarms, all going off simultaneously outside your bedroom window at all possible hours of the day or night.

4) You find the following events thrilling:

a. Stores that never open (ever) at their posted hours.

b. Stores that never, ever post their hours.

c. Stores that will only carry a certain item once a year or never again as long as you both shall live.

d. Stores that play wild music so loudly that when your wife asks you something you can see her mouth move but hear nothing coming out of it.

5) You desire to move to Mexico is because:

a. You want to live in an established American expat community where Mexicans, like slaves, wait on you hand and foot for the rest of your life.

b. You want to help Americanize another Mexican town with all your American pathologies until the town is unrecognizable as Mexican.

c. You are on the lam from the law in more than one country for income tax evasion.

d. You want to help drive up the prices of real estate until no Mexicans living or who have ever lived could possibly afford to live in their own town.

Please answer all of these questions as honestly as possible and forward them to The President of the Republic of Mexico (whoever that turns out to be) in care of Mexico City, Mexico.

Your expatriation depends on it!

tm