El Jalapeño: Man who said ‘ahorita’ in 1998 finally returns neighbor’s tool

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MEXICO CITY — A local resident who promised to return a borrowed pipe wrench “ahorita” during the spring of 1998 rang his neighbor’s doorbell Tuesday morning to hand back the tool, citing unexpected traffic delays along the way.

Rodrigo Mendoza, 52, stood on the doorstep holding a slightly weathered 14-inch Craftsman wrench that he had originally borrowed to fix a leaky kitchen sink during the Ernesto Zedillo administration. Upon answering the door, homeowner Mateo Gómez noted that Mendoza apologized immediately for the brief hold-up before asking if anyone had seen his nephew, who he claimed was an infant “just yesterday.”

“I was just on my way back over, but traffic on Avenida Insurgentes was absolute chaos,” Mendoza said, handing over the tool with a polite nod of appreciation. “Anyway, here is the wrench. Thank you so much for waiting a moment.”

The encounter brings a conclusion to a borrowing transaction that spanned nearly three decades, four presidential administrations, and the complete transition from dial-up internet to artificial intelligence. According to neighborhood records, Mendoza had explicitly reassured the Gómez family in April 1998 that he would return the item “en un ratito,” a temporal frame that experts say technically remains open-ended under local cultural customs.

Gómez, who was 28 when he first handed over the tool and is now 56, accepted the wrench without incident, noting that the timing felt entirely within reasonable parameters for the region.

“He said he would bring it right back, so we kept the front porch light on for a bit,” Gómez said. “He got held up, which happens to everyone. The important thing is that the sink got fixed and the tool is back where it belongs.”

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