Ruth Rodriguez: You write obituaries?
Markos Mendoza: Yeah. My friend was dating this girl I didn’t like – she was a really horrible person – and when her dad died, I purposely misspelled his name in his obituary and made it took like a typo.
Rodriguez: What paper did you work for?
Mendoza: The Laredo Morning Times
Rodriguez: How was obituary writing for you?
Mendoza: It wasn’t just that they were dying. The more depressing part was how little the families cared. Sometimes they would come in, and the only picture they would have of them was their driver’s license. That was the bummer, because then you have to pretend the family cares when you write it.
Rodriguez: What would you want your obit to say?
Mendoza: (grows silent) Shakespeare wrote his obit right before he died.
Rodriguez: We’ll write your obit if you die.
Mendoza: Just put, "He died as he lived, in a box."
Rodriguez: If you lived in a box, wouldn’t you already be dead in a sense?
Mendoza: Yeah. That’s kind of the point.
Rodriguez: No, seriously, what would you want in your obit? Who would you be remembered by?
Mendoza: Scornful UH administrators.
Rodriguez: No. Realistically.
Mendoza: Who do I have besides friends and family? The bus driver that I wave to.
Rodriguez: Which route do you take.
Mendoza: 30
Rodriguez: What’s your most interesting bus experience?
Mendoza: When I first moved to Houston, I got on the 77 thinking it would go north, but it ended up going south, and I didn’t want to get off, and I figured it would just loop around, but it didn’t loop around. When it came to an end, the guy got really pissy and told me to get off. So I got off and I was in the middle of the Third Ward, and I didn’t know where I was. I was new to Houston.
Rodriguez: (laughs)
Mendoza: Then I see these guys. These kind of thuggish-looking guys, but they’re riding horses. Just riding horses down the middle of the street and I didn’t know what to think of that.
Rodriguez: Maybe you were dead.
Mendoza: Maybe.
