La Moda Strikes Again

Dominicans will do anything to be in fashion, La Moda. I wrote previously about how many motorists have put colored headlights on their cars, in order to be in fashion. That these lights are blinding to oncoming cars is irrelevant. The driver, no matter how awful and beat up a piece of shit he is driving, is in fashion. About 2 or 3 months ago I noticed a Toyota, probably about a 2002 or 2003 that was missing a piece from its trunk. I noticed that other Toyotas that still had this piece had either a piece that was made of 1/2 red and 1/2 orange reflective material or a plain metal connection between the two tail lights. Slowly I started to notice more and more cars that were missing this piece. This is what they looked like. The top two are the before pictures. The bottom picture is after. Suddenly I started to see lots of Toyotas missing this piece. I decided, not realizing that some cars just had that plain metal piece, that there was someone in Santiago who was finding unattended Toyotas and prying that piece off the car. I went a step further and hypothesized that this thief had all of these reflective pieces on a wall, or walls in their house. Suddenly it appeared as though it was an epidemic. There were missing pieces everywhere I looked. I started to ask others if they noticed it. Some did, most didn't. It got to the point where Massiel and I had a contest going to see who could spot one of these cars first. The first one to see a Toyota that was missing the piece had to say, "There's another one". The ride to or from Massiel's job takes less than 20 minutes and we would always see four or five during this time. Then a few days ago we were at a mall and as I pulled out I noticed a parked taxi with the missing piece and I couldn't resist. We pulled alongside and Massiel asked him if he knew that he was missing a part of his trunk and he told her that of course he did. That was La Moda. DFD