Pink Boots and a Machete Read Online Free PDF

Darwin was a closet cheerleader.
    I admit I didn’t take the typical scientist route. Though my love of animals continued as I got older, in fear of being labeled the creepy critter girl, I stopped harvesting eight-legged creatures under my bed. I was a very good student, but in school I wasn’t very good at science or math. Even today I think the teaching of those subjects is geared toward boys. Rather than fight the system, I focused on what ballet had trained me for: I joined my first cheerleading dance squad, the West Kendall Wildcats.
    Mami and Mima were happy I was back in skirts.
    In high school I cultivated my artistic side and let the nerdy boys have science. I excelled in writing courses, largely becauseof my vivid imagination, and became editor of the school paper. This gave me the opportunity to get some life experience outside of the classroom. To pursue a story, I embedded myself in a homeless camp in downtown Miami. My mom thought I was staying at a friend’s house. When she realized I’d been living in a tent amid vagabonds, she encouraged me to pursue other extracurricular activities. To this day I feel a strong affinity with the homeless as fellow wanderers and survivalists. It was with them that I first learned to camp.
    But in life there are detours, and for a brief time I headed not toward the wilds but in the opposite direction.
    My grandfather Pipo passed away when I was six. We’d always lived in the same house and been very close. I would often go to work with him at the cinema, where he was a handy-man. He could usually sneak me into screenings of films before they were released. It was very exciting to go to the back room, where all the films were stored and previewed. I fell in love with movies.
    Most of all, I fell in love with stardom.
    My grandmother looked like a blonde, green-eyed starlet. She loved to watch television and often said that I was destined for fame. Apparently I was, though not in the Hollywood way she surely had in mind. But knowing I would have my grandmother’s support and approval, I began auditioning for school plays and quickly landed a lead role. After glowing reviews, I received an internship at the Actor’s Playhouse, a local professional theater, where I continued performing in musicals. I’m Cuban. Drama queen runs in my blood.
    When I graduated from high school, I got a two-bit agent and appeared as an extra in feature films. Yes, I am that unrecognizable girl walking past the camera in that movie. I didn’t even consider applying for college. I honestly believed that school would get in the way of an acting career. Oddly enough, my mom and Mima were OK with this decision. In fact, they were proud. My grandmother, in particular, loved watching me in the limelight. Though I had yet to get a speaking part, I considered myself a professional actress.
    In reality I was a professional secretary and waitress who got fired a lot.
    My big break finally came when I began appearing regularly as a bikini-clad model on Mima’s favorite Latin TV program, Sabado Gigante . Sadly, Mima did not live to see me on it. But I always had the feeling she was somehow responsible, smiling from heaven.
    (Years later, in a funny twist of fate, I appeared on that show again, not in a swimsuit but as a wildlife expert with lemurs in tow. “The snakes,” I was told, would have to “wait outside.” Turns out my grandmother’s crush, Don Francisco, the effervescent host who is a household name in Latino circles, was terrified of snakes and highly superstitious.)
    Much to my mother’s delight, I had become a full-fledged girlie-girl and performer, putting to good use all those years of ballet classes. But the truth is I was spending more time behind a desk than in front of an audience. I didn’t mind the work, though it was often tedious, and the long hours didn’t scare me, but I quickly realized I wasn’t cut out for a