Leaving the United States and entering Colombia, I had no knowledge of the Spanish language. I’m not even sure if I knew any Spanish before to begin with. So there I was, five years old and in the need of learning a new tongue. The window of opportunity for learning a new language was still there, so that was good news. Yeah, perfectly good news. My parents signed me up for a bilingual school. So I was going to dominate the English portion from the start, good news.
But when it came to Spanish, a decision was made, I was to waste my extra time learning Spanish. Understandable, right? Well, the way they decided to teach me made as much sense as cutting my legs off and jumping in a pool full of sharks. During the school day, after an hour or so, we were given a fifteen minute break. Students just ate snacks, sat outside, talked. Nothing special. Meanwhile, I was shown to the door and walked towards a small closet-like office placed under some stairs, were an old woman waited for me. She was the equivalent of the mother superior of my elementary school career. She would sit me in this room, by her side and made me read cards, made me tell her if that word was a verb or noun, she made me read stories out of books and answer questions at such a fast pace. I detested those fifteen minutes, I sat in a small, hot room, hungry, while my peers socialized and ate outside under the warm sun. Life sure knows how to treat me well.
My first grade English teacher once saw me writing the number six. She froze, as if I had just proved to her Kennedy was shot by Hoffa who was living on a secret military island in the Bermuda Triangle. She asked me to rewrite the number six, I did. I started from the center, as opposed to the standard way of starting at the end. She gave of a sigh of relief, it all made sense now, my ugly handwriting was not entirely my fault, it was my previous teacher.
Next time I arrived at the closet, I saw a giant scroll of paper, the largest sheet of paper I had ever laid my eyes on. The next time I would see paper rivaling that size, I was to be touring the local newspaper’s printers. I knew something bad was going to happen. The lady sat me in front of the paper, handed me a pencil and said to me something about repeating the characters of the alphabet. My heart sank into my stomach and drowned, my lungs collapsed upon themselves, my intestines tangled themselves up in an attempt to run away. I wanted then and there to die. I grabbed the pencil, looked at the paper and allowed myself to feel as miserable as possible. I began with the letter “A.” I wrote that damn letter until I could have closed me eyes and written Macbeth without even noticing I was writing. I could have picked up a pencil with my other hand and written out the complete works of all the Beat writers and poets. My hand was pounding with pain, asking for a break, and the breaks only came when the pencil needed to be sharpened. I must have wasted more pencils that year than most people did in their lifetime. I felt like a medieval monk copying the same Biblical verses over and over. I do remember one time breaking down when I walked in there, I refused to work and sat there staring out the window, watching people walk by and the grass sing in the sunlight. I cried, I wanted out I wanted out I wanted out. I was hungry, I was unhappy, I wanted out. After a while, I began my work became more and more mediocre as a I realized that I was bound to waste my year in that room no matter how hard I worked. Once I reached the letter “Z” I almost shouted with joy, I finished it faster than usual. I thought I was free, my days as a printing press was over. How naive. The lady pulled a new sheet and commanded me to start all over again, I must have cried.
When I returned to class, I walked in with my head down. Tired of working for a heartless woman. I loved the English portion of the day, I zipped through it with ease. But then the Spanish teacher walked in and I knew my day was going to get worse again. She would take all the other students to a large table were they would read. I sat at my desk simply doing nothing, sometimes crying. I wanted to be there, but I couldn’t. Once I tried to ask her to go to the restroom, I couldn’t speak Spanish. I tried asking for her permission to go, but she didn’t speak English. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to communicate an idea to someone who cannot understand. I made a fool out of myself in front of my classmates and the teacher. I went back to my desk, put my head down and cried.
